THE HOLLOW SMILE
Book One: Kiss Me Until I Bleed
Evangeline Saint-Clair stepped out of the rain and into the red glow of the city that never slept. Men turned to stare the way men always did (hungry, stupid, half in love already), but she didn't see them. She saw only the flickering sign above the iron door: LE SOURIRE CREUX. The Hollow Smile. Home.
The bouncers parted without a word. They knew better than to touch what belonged to Lucien Vargas.
Inside, the music was a slow heartbeat. Bodies moved like liquid shadow. At the bar, the silver-haired bartender slid a glass of something thick and black across the counter.
"He's waiting upstairs, Miss Saint-Clair."
Evangeline smiled. The corners of her mouth split open with a soft, wet sound only she could hear. Tiny threads of dark blood traced down her chin before the skin knitted itself shut again.
"He always is."
She drank. The liquid tasted like sin and copper. Then she climbed the private staircase lit by black candles that never melted.
At the top waited a heavy iron door carved with screaming faces. It opened before she touched it.
Lucien Vargas sat on a throne made of human bones.
He wore a three-piece suit the color of midnight, a blood-red tie, and the kind of beauty that made people forget how to breathe. Pale skin, sharp cheekbones, eyes like frozen mercury. When he smiled, the room felt colder.
"Welcome back, my Evangeline," he said, voice smooth as velvet dragged across a blade. "Three months is a long time to keep me starving."
Evangeline walked forward until his gloved hand closed around her throat (not squeezing, just owning).
"I brought you a gift," she whispered.
Lucien's smile widened. "Tell me."
"A detective. Gabriel Reed. He thinks he's in love with me."
Lucien laughed softly. "Mortals and their adorable delusions. Bring him alive. I want to watch him break when he sees what you really are."
She leaned in and kissed him. Their mouths met like a car crash (teeth clashing, blood shared). When she pulled away, her lipstick was smeared black.
"As you wish," she said.
That night, Gabriel Reed sat in his car outside her apartment building, rain drumming on the roof. He had been following her for weeks. Missing persons cases circled her like moths, but no bodies, no evidence, just silence. And that smile. God, that smile haunted him.
His phone buzzed. Unknown number.
You look cold, Detective.
He looked up. Evangeline stood beside his window in a soaked black dress that clung to every curve. She hadn't been there a second ago.
She smiled. "Want to get out of the rain?"
They ended up in a diner at 3 a.m., sitting across from each other in a red vinyl booth. Steam rose from their coffee. Gabriel couldn't stop staring at her mouth.
"People disappear around you," he said.
"Maybe they just want to disappear with me." She leaned forward, voice low. "Have you ever wanted to disappear, Gabriel?"
His pulse hammered. When her fingers brushed his knuckles, electricity shot straight to his spine.
Later, in his apartment, clothes hit the floor in a trail from door to bed. He kissed her like a drowning man kisses air. She kissed him like a predator playing with food.
When he bit her neck (hard, possessive), she laughed, flipped him onto his back with impossible strength, and straddled him.
"My turn."
Her teeth sank deep into his shoulder. Pleasure and pain exploded together. He screamed into the pillow as she drank, hips grinding against him, moans vibrating against his skin. When she finally pulled away, her eyes were solid black and her smile split wide enough to show bone.
She licked her lips clean and whispered, "Sleep, darling."
He woke alone at dusk, weak and shaking. Two perfect puncture wounds scarred black on his shoulder. His phone glowed with a single text from an unknown number:
Bring him tonight or I take his heart instead. – L
Evangeline knelt in the bone throne room, head bowed. Lucien stroked her hair like a favored pet.
"You've seasoned him perfectly," he said. "He'll scream so beautifully when I turn him… or when I kill him."
She shivered. "He's different. He fought even while I drank."
Lucien's fingers tightened in her hair. "Then he'll suffer more."
Deep beneath the club lay the cathedral (black marble, rivers of red candle wax, dozens of beautiful men and women in tattered wedding clothes chained to the walls). Every one of them bore the same bleeding smile. This was where mortals became eternal.
Tonight the altar waited for Gabriel Reed.
Evangeline led him down in the hidden elevator, his eyes blindfolded, wrists bound with silk. He trembled against her.
"Evie, I'm scared."
"You should be."
The blindfold came off. He saw the chained brides and grooms, saw the altar, saw Lucien waiting in blood-stained priest robes.
Gabriel tried to run. Chains erupted from the floor and dragged him down.
Lucien walked forward, smiling like a proud father. "Detective Reed. Tonight you become what she is. Or you die screaming. Either way, I win."
Evangeline's smile split open again, blood pouring down her chin. She couldn't stop it anymore.
Gabriel looked at her with pure betrayal. "Evie… help me."
Lucien cupped Gabriel's face. "She was mine long before she ever pretended to be yours."
Flashback (seven years ago): nineteen-year-old Evangeline, bald from chemo, dying in a hospital bed. Lucien appearing like a dark angel, offering eternity in exchange for her soul and her smile. The first kiss that literally tore her mouth open forever.
Back in the cathedral, Lucien handed her an ornate black-glass dagger.
"Kill him yourself," he commanded. "Prove you're still mine."
Evangeline took the dagger. Her hands shook.
She walked to Gabriel, raised the blade.
His eyes filled with tears. "Please…"
For one heartbeat, her own eyes were human again.
Then she spun and drove the dagger into Lucien's chest with all her strength.
Black fire exploded from the wound. Lucien roared, the cathedral shaking. Chains shattered. The chained brides screamed and attacked like feral beasts.
Evangeline grabbed Gabriel's hand. "RUN!"
They sprinted for the elevator. Lucien ripped the dagger free (wound already closing), shadow wings spreading across the ceiling.
"YOU ARE MINE ETERNALLY!" his voice thundered.
The elevator doors slammed shut inches from his reaching claws.
Inside, they collapsed against each other, bleeding and shaking.
Gabriel touched her ruined, bleeding smile. "What the hell are you?"
She laughed through blood and tears. "Yours… if we survive the night."
The elevator reached the club floor.
Doors opened.
Every single dancer, bartender, patron turned at once. Hundreds of perfect, hollow, bleeding smiles.
In perfect unison, Lucien's voice poured from every mouth:
"Going somewhere, my love?"
Evangeline pulled Gabriel close, pressed one last desperate kiss to his lips (tasting of blood and goodbye), and whispered:
"Hold on tight, darling. The city just woke up hungry.