MY SUGAR MUMMY IS A BEAUTIFUL VAMPIRE

Rose's mind was an incessant whirlwind as she made her way from the airport to Damien's sprawling gothic revival manor. Each plodding mile marker only stoked the blazing crucible of her fury into incandescent new heights.

How could he have done this? How did she ever love such a man with every immolating fiber of her being, why would he enmesh himself in the very same malign conspiracy responsible for Blake's ruination?

The thought caused a pulse of scintillant rage to detonate in the pit of her stomach. She could still so vividly recall the ardor of Damien's pursuit all those centuries ago - the smoldering promise sheathed behind each whispered endearment, every searing caress a vow to cherish and shelter her until the inexorable laws of entropy finally wrenched them asunder.

Yet for all his seductive murmurings, all the poetry and undying fealty he had painted in beautiful shades across the canvas of her credulous heart, Damien had been spinning an intricate web of lies and deceptions all along. Just another serpentine strand in the increasingly labyrinthine skein Rose now found herself so utterly trapped within.

Her jaw clenched until the hinges strained, the molten wrath simmering in her marrow forcing Rose's claws to partly extend with each upwelling surge of fresh aggression.

Both sets of razored obsidian lances scored matching crescents into the supple leather sheathing her gripping hands, offering a momentary outlet as her town car idled up the raking gravel approach to Damien's estate.

The hulking facade of the mansion itself seemed to loom from out of the night's deepening gloom, its crenellated rooflines and imposing buttresses proclaiming it a twisted bastion of aesthetic and ideological history.

The sort of gaudy, towering affectation only the most deliriously self-absorbed narcissists could ever truly revel in.

A fresh rush of disgust shivered through Rose's psyche at that stark observation.

How utterly blind she had been, so besotted by Damien's outward charm and seductive proclamations that she had failed to note the unmistakable hallmarks of his towering vanity and rarefied sense of arrogance.

Her town car rolled to a ponderous halt before the estate's imposing arched portcullis, still yawning open in the sort of pretentious invitation typical of its ostentatious owner. A long journey it was through the air but shorter from the airport to the estate.

Yet, Rose barely waited for the engine to cycle down before she was wrenching the rear passenger door open and sweeping herself out onto the gravel forecourt beyond.

"Take a quick drive around," Rose said to the person sitting at the driver's seat. Dedicated to only listening and acting, Reggie found the request rather odd and hard to follow because he knew where they were at. Ancroft, the land and home to the infamous Damien Durello!

Yet the instructions were clear. She instructed Reggie, her driver to wait for her in the car.

Her kitten heels rang out with percussive menace, each measured footfall bridging the remaining distance to Damien's front door trailing drifting eddies of rose petals and ozone in her wake.

Aura roiling and talons needling outwards in an unmistakable silent accusation of threatened violence, she reached the towering double doors and simply...shouldered through them in a thunderous violation of entry.

The foyer's exquisitely paneled interior greeted her imperious arrival like the concussive downbeat of a cosmic orchestra - Rose's incandescent fury and righteous indignation striking refracted chords across the gleaming surfaces and hanging tapestries lining every wall.

Her nostrils flared against the sickening overlay of piquant sandalwood and clove that always seemed to pervade these halls.

"Damien!" Her shout lashed out like a razored whip-crack, instantly harrowing up the yawning stillness that had so briefly reigned. "Show yourself, coward...or I'll ensure the only sanctum that remains is the cold oblivion that awaits us all!"

For several molten heartbeats, the only reply was a continuation of that gaping silence, as if the universe itself had shrunk away in deference to the scintillant blaze of Rose's fury.

And then, barely perceptible at first, ehe caught something.

A sound, the insidious whisper-hiss of movement from somewhere in the unplumbed recesses filtering down unmarked corridors and shadowed passageways.

Rose's jaw clenched tighter as she spun towards the noise, shoulders hunching into a threatening half-crouch that spoke of imminent and brutal violence.

She caught tantalizing flickers of dark distorted motion through the filigree vaulting - they were dark blue aura-like dimensional contortions of weird perspective, moving in different patterns that made her temples throb in agony from trying to make sense of them.

This went on for a while until a series of inhumanly languid footfalls began to echo from the eastern parlor. There, framed by a chevron of spilling candlelight, stood the unmistakable silhouette of Damien Durello himself slowly ambling over the threshhold and into lucid view.

"My darling Rose." His cultured baritone drifted down the length of the foyer with the silken undulations of an aroused prostitute.

"To what fortuitous twist of fate do I owe the pleasure of your company this night? Surely, you must realize how I've been simply...pining in your absence."

Rose's features settled into a cold, ruthless mask, her talons reflexively extending their full brutal lengths in a predatory display of promised violence. "Cut the simpering melodramatics, Damien . Your thinly veiled attempts at deflection are more transparent than you seem to realize." Rose said to the lord of Ancroft without hesitation.

Normally, she wouldn't dare speak this way to him but at that moment, seeing his beautiful face, she was already overwhelmed with rage to think straight.

She stalked forwards with each contemptuous phrase, the living embodiment of an avenging fury descended straight from the woefully ill-conceived realms of cosmic injustice.

"You have involved yourself in plots and despicable maneuverings - one whose ultimate unraveling could very well see Blake's name posthumously cleared, but only at the cost of unleashing a reckoning that burns this entire wretched cosmos down to a cinder."

Damien's only reply was an insouciant quirk of one perfectly sculpted eyebrow, painted features parting in a disarming half-smile that did little to mask the veiled threat seething beneath.

"Oh Rose, your penchant for theatrics never ceases to amuse. If only you'd see reason and return to me, we could spare ourselves this unnecessary conflict."

She closed the remaining distance between them in a whirlwind of blurred momentum before he could utter another word. One razored claw extended to lay across his throat, scoring an infinitesimal line that wept a slow blossoming of blood from base to delicately pointed tip.

"Let's forgo any more of your mealymouthed preamble, shall we?" She spat the words through gritted fangs, eyes glittering like amethyst braziers set with balefire. "The only truth that holds any bearing is the one where you implicate yourself fully in this conspiracy."

Damien held unnervingly still despite the keening whisper of Rose's talons digging shallow furrows in the taut tendons of his neck. After a protracted beat, he huffed out a slow, indulgent chuckle and rolled his eyes in consternated mirth.

Damien remained eerily calm, even as Rose's talons pressed against his skin. With a smirk, he began to explain his twisted worldview.