Rumor had it that Eve Stakes, the infamous vampire CEO of Blood Lust Corporation, could make ten million in a day before she'd even get out of her coffin. The rumors were wrong. They assumed Eve started her work day in the evening, when her company had already made all that money. In reality, Eve began her work day at midnight, and made her ten million before any other CEO in the country was even awake. That was her secret. She had started early. Centuries before everyone else. And with her centuries of experience in the business world, there was no other CEO as good as her.
But, just as she had never met her equal in the business world, she had also not met her match in romance. Nor did she expect to. At twenty-one hundred years old, and still single, she was practically a spinster by now. She'd learned to dedicate herself to her work. The fickle vampire overlords bored her, and humans lived too little to be even taken into consideration. Thus, she had dedicated her life to creating the perfect synthetic blood, and her fruitful research had built her the corporation that she ruled today. She rarely had the time to play around in the lab nowadays, but she enjoyed the business side of things even more. But things were about to change.
That fateful night, when the clock chimed twelve and Eve threw open her coffin and yawned, no one could have guessed the chain of events that was about to unfold. Even when she reached for her caffeinated blood drink, in the ice box next to her coffin, and found it missing, Eve could not comprehend how much her destiny was about to change. One little slip on the part of her maid, who had forgotten to refill the ice box. Eve thought nothing of it, not even that she was going to fire the girl. Indeed, without caffeine, Eve's brain was able to do only very little thinking. She could remember to shower, that much was a given, having performed this task every night since the humans had invented the shower itself, in its most primitive form. And she managed to put on her clothes, a long, black dress, low cut at the back and tied with straps that resembled a corset. The straps were a real headache without the caffeine.
And then, stiletto heels in hand, she rushed to the elevator that connected her penthouse to the office atop Blood Lust Tower. She put on her shoes while the elevator was descending, and she wobbled out of it, past her desk, past her speechless secretary, and out in the corridor to the vending machine. Caffeine. She needed caffeine. Craved it. Thirsted for it, more than she'd ever thirsted for blood.
She found the button and pushed it with her long, clawlike fingernail. The red nailpolish chipped, but she didn't care. The machine was moving, a can of caffeinated blood making its way towards the bottom, where she could pick it up. Time seemed to slow to a standstill. To her left, she noticed out of the corner of her eye the werewolf, sensed him more than she saw him. She heard him shout "Out of my way!" and, for a moment, she sneered.
Out of his way? she thought. This was her tower, her domain. It was he who should have stayed out of her way. Oh, she was going to show him what a mistake he was making. All she needed was one sip, to regain her superhuman reflexes. The can dropped, finally, and she began to reach for it. And then the mail cart hit her with full force, projecting her into the wall.
***
Rex Fidel, the unluckiest werewolf to have ever been hired by a vampire corporation, at least according to himself, saw the mail cart take off out of his hands as if he were watching a movie. It all felt so detached, so surreal. Here he was, on his first day, on the only job he'd been able to find after months of fruitless job hunting, and he was already screwing up his one job. He'd been so enthusiastic about being charged with delivering the mail to the big office upstairs that he'd put a little too much strength into pushing his mail cart. And now the thing was out of control and speeding, out of his hands, about to crash into the beautiful pale lady in the low-cut black dress. And, oh, how she was beautiful!
He watched it in slow motion, the cart slamming into her delicate body, propelling her into the wall, and the wall cracking all around her like a halo. A long, narrow package from the cart burst open, and a wooden stake was projected out of it, slicing the delicate skin of her cheek as it thrust itself into the wall. The pale lady did not flinch as the wood cut through her skin. She fixed him with her cold blue eyes and pushed the cart back, while the cut on her cheek was healing with a hiss. Rex did not see the cart rushing back, not even when it slammed into him, sending him flying back down the corridor, where he landed on his butt. All he could see was the beautiful pale lady, looking at him with an unreadable expression on her face. She was so icy cold, she was so cool, and she was so going to fire him.
***
Eve could feel a headache coming on. She always got a headache when she was caffeine-deprived. Her right cheek burned where the wound was closing. She pushed back the cart to free herself, and it slammed back into the mail boy, projecting him into the corridor he'd come from. He half-transformed in mid-air, an instinctive response, no doubt. He did not seem aware of the dog ears that were now poking out of his unruly mop of chestnut-brown hair, nor of the tail poking out of his jeans, as he fell on his butt on the stone floor of the corridor. Werewolves. So annoying. And, most annoying still, in spite of the terrified look on his face and the downcast angle of his dog ears, his tail was wagging. This was definitely going to be a huge headache. She extricated herself from the wall and went back to the vending machine to collect her caffeinated blood drink. As she bent to pick up the can, she could see the wagging tail out of the corner of her eye.
Eve opened the can and took a long swig, the caffeine slowly filling her veins. Slowly, her instincts and reflexes returned. She could sense her secretary standing in the door to her office, too scared to say anything. And she could sense a bunch of girls from the mailroom who'd rushed upstairs and who were hiding behind the corner of the corridor, too scared to come out. Eve took one more sip of her drink, this time more elegantly, and turned to her secretary.
"What is this?" she asked, indicating with a wide, sweeping motion, the mail cart, the mail boy, and the wooden stake.
"Diversity hire!" one of the girls from behind the corner shouted.
Eve immediately heard hurried footsteps running away. She did not know if they belonged to the girl who'd spoken, or to her friends. She did not care. She approached the package that the wooden stake was jutting out of, and picked it up between two fingers to read the label.
"To Miss Eve Stakes, CEO," she read in an impassive voice. "Someone has sent me a wooden stake. How charming! Isobel, call the police, will you? We have a death threat to report. Not a very subtle one."