Scar and Baldy walked inside, forcing me to scramble back or be trampled. Scar began to examine the antiquities on showcases and shelves with an appraising gaze, while Baldy tried to drill a hole in my head with his eyes.

“Good day, Diana. Do you know what date is today?” he asked.

“The twelfth of May?” I replied without thinking. Not the best habit, and definitely not the one to impress Baldy.

“Your debts are due today, Diana. Two hundred thousands.”

“What?! This is insane! You told it was a hundred!”

Badly shrugged. “Inflation.”

I clenched my fists. I had gathered together a hundred from what my dad left me and what I managed to sell earlier, but a hundred wasn’t two hundreds. Not to mention, this was a pure racket, and there just needed to be a limit to injustice.

“This is illegal,” I said. “I’m going to call police on you.”

Behind Baldy’s back, Scar laughed like it was the funniest thing he heard. “Oh, just do that, girl. If anyone goes to prison, it’s you. I’m sure cops will find drugs stashed here, somewhere…”

He went up to a window case and stroked a beautifully painted with blue over white Gzhel vase. “Maybe there?”

In the next moment, he carelessly pushed it to the ground. I gasped as the expensive piece of pottery broke into a hundred of pieces, rushing towards it before my brain caught up with my body.

Then I saw Scar coming up to another fragile antique and jumped up, my face furious. “What are you doing? This is an assault! You have no right!”

My words fell on deaf ears, and I could only watch, helplessly, as Scar grinned and put his hand on a ceramic figurine of a ballerina.

“We will leave when we will get our money, Diana,” Baldy said.

I turned to him, my hands clasped on my chest, my expression pleading. I couldn’t bear to watch these two destroying my dad’s shop. “Please, give me some more time. I will gather your money, I swear.”

“We will wait for them here. I really like to watch these fragile things break, just like that,” Scar said, tapping his fingers at the figurine.

My body shook with desperation and anxiety. I opened my mouth to plead some more when a familiar voice from the side interrupted me.

“My, my. How uncivilised, gentlemen.”

I swivelled on my feet to see JJ leaning on a wall, like he was there all along. His pose was relaxed and casual, his tight-lipped smile pleasant and charming, and only his scarlet eyes showed his hunger.

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He wasn’t looking at me this time—all JJ’s attention was on Baldy and Scar, just where I wanted it to be. I glanced at them too, and saw them wide-eyed and tense. Baldy clenched his fists, Scar’s hands hid in his pockets.

“And just who are you, and what’s with your freaky eyes, man?” Scar asked. “You look like you just escaped from a concentration camp.”

I perked up, alarmed. Right, what was JJ, with his freaky red eyes and slit pupils, doing out of the office where I told him to sit? What about vampires being secret and all that?

“In a way, this is exactly what happened,” JJ said, ungluing from the wall and walking towards the debt collectors.

From the side, the difference between two burly hunks and JJ was glaringly obvious. Not that JJ didn’t have muscle—I saw the way his old shirt hugged his chest, and was sure he had at least a four-pack. Still, he was a head shorter than them, and had a lean composition, while Baldy and Scar had bulky guns of power-lifters.

They saw it too, and I saw them relaxing for a moment. Only a moment—then JJ moved, really moved.

It was the fabled vampire speed and the fabled vampire strength. His movements were so swift I only saw a blur where he passed. In a blink of an eye, JJ brought Baldy to his knees and held his shoulder with one hand and his head with another. Then, he opened his mouth wide, giving me an impressive look on his fangs, and bit down.

I watched him drinking, feasting, and backed away from this sight until my back met the shop counter. My stomach turned queazy and my knees leaden. With a corner of my eye I saw Scar turning pale, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from JJ. As shocking the image was, it was weirdly fascinating. Erotic, even.

It was there, in JJ’s gentle-looking grip, in his eyes, closed from bliss, and in a similar expression on Baldy’s face. Whatever magic shit JJ pulled on him just now, Baldy liked what was going on. A lot.

A minute later, JJ let Baldy go. His knees buckled beneath him, but I was relieved to see that he was still conscious, if very dazed.

JJ’s eyes were still red, though. He turned towards Scar, who stood in a fighting stance, a butterfly knife in his shaking hands.

“Don’t come closer, monster!” he said.

JJ just smiled. He was on Scar quicker than he could even try to resist, and another minute later the man joined his dazed buddy on the floor.

Then JJ turned his red eyes to me and I pressed myself into a counter, grasping my silver earring with a hand like it was my salvation. There was some blood left on JJ’s lips, and he licked it with slow, sensuous gesture.

“These two were fighters, full of blood and life,” JJ said, walking towards me one torturously slow step after another. “Enough to sate me even after a century of imprisonment.”

He stopped next to me and leaned closer until I could feel his breath on my face. “But if you want it, ma chèrie, there’s still space in my stomach for a taste of you.”

I saw it in his eyes, in his smile, heard it in his voice—the promise of the same pleasure that brought two adult men to their knees.

“No way. Just no way,” I breathed out. Then I gathered my wits together to frown at him and push at his chest. He didn’t budge, but that wasn’t the point. “Go away, JJ, and deal with the mess you left!”

He chuckled, his eyes returning to their original grass-green colour, and did as I told. He came up to Baldy and leaned towards his face. For another minute JJ and Baldy just exchanged that long look, and I watched Baldy’s face become glassier and glassier with each second. Then he repeated the same with Scar.

“They won’t remember my appearance. They will return to their boss, thinking that they returned because you didn’t have money on hand,” JJ said to me as the two of them slowly got up and walked out of the store.

My eyes widened in astonishment. “You can do something like that? Well, I guess then food won’t be a problem for you.”

The ethics of this were still questionable, but between these two getting bitten and a decades old china ballerina, I’d pick ballerina any day. I beamed at JJ, my saviour. “So there’s no reason at all for you to bite me, ever. Capiche?”