Sabrina pulled her jacket tighter as she walked down the quiet street, all but deserted in the night. She wished she had brought a hoodie with her in the morning, but it was so warm then. Now the air was quite chilly and made even worse because of the wind. 

It was autumn in New York City and the busiest season of the year for the 20 year-old. She had to be up early every day, spend all day in the studio training and rehearsing for The Nutcracker and not get home until late – and late by New York standards is pretty late. 

If she loved ballet one iota less, she could not keep up with the schedule, let alone with the ballet world and maybe not even life. Dance and ballet had been her refuge from bullying in childhood, from dysphoria when she began transitioning and now from discrimination in the ranks of professional dancers, company leaders and donors. The board of trustees could posture about inclusion and progress, but the reality on the ground was that many dancers, teachers and choreographers came from conservative backgrounds – or they were just that cutthroat they didn’t mind misgendering or deadnaming Sabrina if it got them one step closer to leaving the corps. 

Her lonely, cold walk in the dark was one consequence of that. The corps de ballet, second company members and a decent number of pre-professional students were normally housed in dorms the company owned in Manhattan, a short walk from the studio. Sabrina could not room with the men and some of the women, parents of the pre-professional students and finally a donor from Texas, had objected to her rooming with them. Instead, one of the trustees pulled some strings and arranged for the company to rent her a studio in Brooklyn – but it took nearly an hour between the Subway and her walk to get there. 

But she had the dance and it was enough. 

The trees were dropping their leaves and the wind was blowing them every which way, creating a background music from the rustling, but as she walked she began to hear something else through the autumnal noises: some kind of bird call and footsteps. She stopped suddenly and the footsteps continued briefly, so they weren’t hers. There was an answering bird call. 

She looked around for a place to hide and call the cops, but the street was straight and all but empty. Panicking, she sped up and tried to get her phone out of her pocket to call the police, but in her fear she fumbled it and it fell into a drain and was gone. Now she broke into a run.

Ahead of her, she noticed that there was a gap, like a driveway for deliveries or parking, between two buildings. It wasn’t much, but it was her best chance to hide. She dashed down it, into a man dressed in black, making one of the bird calls. 

“Hello, little girl,” he said. 

The footsteps grew closer and closer. 

“Do you have a phone?” Sabrina said. “You’ve got to call the cops – someone’s stalking me!”

“We do have phones,” said a second man, “But we won’t be calling the cops any time soon.”

The second man, also dressed in black, came around the corner and halted. The footsteps ended, too. 

“Now, little girl, are we going to do this the hard way or the easy way?” said the first man. 

Sabrina shoved him with all of her might and attempted to run again, but the second man was too quick. He grabbed her arms in one massive hand and held her tightly, then he put his other hand over her mouth. “She’s got some spirit in her. I like that,” he said, then he whispered in her ear, “And by the way, we know exactly what you are, you freak.”

Still, she continued to struggle. She attempted to kick one of the men, but in the darkness, she couldn’t see well enough to aim and missed him. She was forced towards a shed, which the other man hurried to and opened. Entering, he rummaged inside for a bit and then returned with electrical tape and bound her wrists and taped her mouth.

They forced her into the shed and down onto a disgusting mattress, then tied her ankles to some pillars, so her legs were spread wide. One of them whistled “Another One Bites the Dust” while he worked. Sabrina felt sick to her stomach and dry-heaved. 

She cried, sobbing and choking in the disgusting smells of the mattress and shed. She was so lost in her own misery she didn’t hear the second man, the one who had herded her like a sheep, tell the first one “I thought I heard something, I’ll go check it out.”

“Be quick,” the first one said. 

After a few moments, they heard nothing and the man did not return. The remaining man walked out of the shed, calling “Tommy! Tommy?”

“I’m afraid Tommy won’t be joining you tonight,” said a new voice, a feminine one. 

“What the –” No one ever knew what he was going to say, because his voice was cut off into a gurgling sound. 

“I’m here to help you. You might be alarmed at my appearance, but you must not scream or call out. Can you do that?”

Sabrina nodded and one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen stepped into the shed. She wore a black dress with silvery threads woven into it, so that it shimmered in the low light. She had a sheer shawl wrapped around it, like a polite nod to the chill air. Sheer black tights and stiletto heels completed an outfit that would have been perfect for a charity gala. But what was alarming was the fact that her pale face and dress were covered in blood.

The woman knelt down and gently helped Sabrina from the ropes and undid the electrical tape on her wrists and mouth. 

“Thank you,” Sabrina said. “But what did you do?”

“I killed them and drank their blood,” she said. “I’m a vampire.”

“A vampire?” Sabrina said. Instinctually, she backed away.

“You don’t have to do that,” the vampire said. “All you have to do is look into my eyes.”

“Look . . . into your eyes,” Sabrina repeated. She felt an enormous pressure behind her eyes. Thinking became difficult and agreeing became easy. 

“Yes, Sabrina, look into my eyes and melt for me.”

Sabrina melted. 

With just a gesture, the vampire led the young ballerina out of the shed. Natalie the vampire was glad she had gotten to Sabrina, before the girl’s trauma grew worse. She had been turned over 500 years ago and had accumulated quite the fortune and she had always loved dancing. For many decades she had an arrangement with the ballet company, where in exchange for her generous donations, she was allowed to seduce and feed upon one dancer who took her fancy and Sabrina’s strength and grace as a dancer, her love of ballet and her resilience in the face of the discrimination she endured had won Natalie over from afar. 

Yes, Natalie thought, this would not be the first night Sabrina melted for her.