[h3]Michelle Darrens[/h3]
[b]Sunset Lounge[/b]

Teeth.

He was on her in a flash of dark hair and dark suit, pointed teeth breaking skin and flooding Michelle's nerves. Pain, yes, but not nearly as much of it as she would have liked--pleasure hijacked her system in rogue bursts, re-writing whatever it was she was meant to feel about having some leech stuck to her neck. It radiated, coiled, pumped out along with her blood onto his awful tongue, and if she gasped with a bit of a moan on the end of her breath it likely was stolen.

Worse was that it was over in a flash. Her muscles were crawling, her breath was coming heard, her blood was louder in her ears than the music around her, but the half-dozen goddamn vampires crowding around her didn't include the asshole who'd nipped her. They included all sorts of Head Bitch level people, and if Michelle had been looking forward to tangling with Andre one of these days now and here were [i]not[/i] the time. The only trouble was convincing herself of that, because [i]God[/i] did it sound like what she wanted to do right now. What could have been more satisfying than letting those crawling muscles under her skin burst free? Than whipping around and burying a claw into Pretty-Miss-Thing's tucked little tummy, than turning around and feeling her secretary's skull split between teeth like railway spikes? Like--

Stop. Focus.

She was talking to her, the short one. Babbling on about reparations or towels or what the fuck [i]ever[/i]. Didn't she know she should be running? That it was a matter of [i]how many[/i] vamps would go down before they could stop her, and that logically it would be the ones closest to her that went first? But this wasn't Michelle's first rodeo, and it wasn't going to be the last time she nearly ripped a dance floor apart. So she turned her swollen black eyes to the counter and spread her fingers over its mirrored circus and focused. She could feel it clawing its way through the skin, through the holes in hers, and she would...not...let...it...win.

It was a handy little trick. She'd learned it from some Child of Gaia peacenik who'd been in her first pack and been damn grateful she had ever since--turning a frenzy inward wasn't easy, and it [i]hurt[/i] like a sonofabitch, but it was better than waking up wondering whose liver was stuck between her teeth. Just think about the people, she forced herself to remember, all those people whose lives would end in an instant because she couldn't hold herself together. It was visible, too, her fingers cracking the bar top under forearms tight as iron bars. Her eyes flooded and beaded red at the corners, her tongue tasted blood, but she held on--[i]one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi--[/i]

And it passed.

She breathed out low as she did, licking away the blood at her own lips and swallowing it back even as she brought a hand to her eyes and smeared the red of it over the back of her wrist. Rolling her shoulders, she even managed a bark of a laugh as she took the little creature's towel and ran it over her face and neck. It hurt--fuck yeah it hurt--but it was another little fuck you to Big Bad in there and Michelle was no stranger to pain.

"You," she pointed out wryly, coughing past the knot in her throat, "are a brave little bitch, you know that?" Spitting the rest of the blood into the towel and tossing it to the counter disdainfully, Michelle sat up straight and unkinked her neck while her breathing worked its way back to normal. "Next time you see someone like me get chomped by someone like that you run for the hills, cupcake. We're not all so cute and cuddly."

She drained her tequila, sucking it past her sharp teeth and feeling it scream down her torn-but-healing throat before setting the glass faux-daintily back to the counter. Now it was the Ventrue that had her attention, and she smiled a little crocodile smile.

"But sure, honey. Let's talk reparations."