Caged Between the Vampire & Demon Lords

'CLICK!'

The giant brown door of the conference room opened slightly and a pair of slender feet encased in white stilettos stepped out. After flipping her dark brown luscious hair that was tumbling to the front covering her eyes, her hands got busy grabbing a bunch of heavy files. She was wearing a white top with black stripes paired with a long black pencil skirt that went below her knees. Her hands looked soft and tender as if made of clay that had trouble carrying the files in her hands. She was fair-skinned with a pair of beautiful honey golden eyes and perfectly shaped eyebrows above. Her face was draped with a light tint of makeup. Her lips were dark red which fell apart as she sighed.

"That's a lot of work!"

Her face was beautiful no doubt, but was dominated with fatigue making it look pale. Her beautiful eyelids were dropping shut owing to weariness.

The girl turned around to click the door shut, and her honey-golden eyes fell on the empty seats of the conference room wherein she had her ass glued to one of those seats for the past three hours. She was the last one to leave the conference room at 2:20 AM.

After passing a sleepy, cold gaze at the conference room, she closed the door and strode over the cafeteria. As she was walking to the cafeteria, her head swung side by side to glance at the empty office cubicles. Her lips took a downturn and she thought, "Lucky people to leave early!"

Her eyes scanned the entire cafeteria that was brightly lit, but with no soul lingering around. After placing the files on the wooden table, she walked up to the coffee machine. Grabbing a white mug from the rack and placing it under the filter, she pressed the button. The pin-drop silence was broken by the sound of hot coffee pouring inside the coffee mug bringing a thin smile on her face.

She propped her elbows on the table, her sleepy eyes focusing on the smoky, aromatic coffee filling the mug. A fat finger came from the girl's back pushing the button off.

A dramatic, squeaky voice followed, "Veronica, how did you even attempt to kill your dear sleep by making coffee?!"

Veronica closed her eyes for a second and blew out a sigh of contempt. She knew who it was. It was her friend, Bridget working in the marketing department.

Both the girls were working at Perfumerza, one of the top perfume manufacturing companies in the world. While Bridget was a part of the marketing department, Veronica's work was far more complex than hers as she held the position of the financial analyst. Despite both of them working in different departments, what made them best of friends was their night shift work that would start from 6 P.M. and last till 1:30 A.M. in the morning.

Well, that was what the company policy stated. Those timings were merely numbers on paper. In reality, they had worked overtime where in some cases Veronica would leave office at 5 A.M.

Veronica didn't care to face her friend and started the coffee machine again. But there went Bridget pressing it off again. Veronica was done with those childish tricks. Her fingers digging inside her dark brown hair averted and formed fists slamming against the steel countertop. She turned her chair around and said sharply, "What's wrong with you, Bridget? I have got a lot to do! So, let me concentrate!!"

Bridget was a chubby little girl draped into formal clothing consisting of a peach coloured shirt messily tucked in a pair of dark grey trousers. Her dress code was formal, it was just that with every passing hour of working overtime all alone in the office did her well tucked formal clothing take the form of a messy one. Quite natural!

Bridget flipped her blonde hair off her shoulder and her black eyes got squinted. She scoffed, "Then concentrate on your work! You should be in the cubicle and not here!"

Veronica furiously turned her seat back to the coffee machine. Her finger pressed the button and she retorted, "I need some coffee to concentrate!"

She sounded angry, but deep down her voice sounded like that of a tired kitten. Bridget opted to quit her drama. She sat on the stool beside Veronica and said calmly, "Veronica, it's already 2:30 A.M. Our shift ended a long time ago, now it's time to pack our bags and walk out!"

Veronica grabbed the full coffee mug and rose from her stool. Walking past the empty table, she reached hers and said, "I am already running late, Bridget! You leave! I have got a lot to do!" She kept the coffee mug on the table and sat hurriedly. Her fingers rummaged through the bunch of files.

A sigh of satisfaction escaped her mouth as her eyes found the file she was searching for. She pulled out a blue-colored file and flipped it open.

Bridget rolled her eyes when she saw Veronica burying her mind over an endless stream of numbers that flew right to left, top to bottom! Being a financial analyst meant numbers all over. The number game was all that they had to play.

Bridget shook her head and averted her gaze from those boring numbers before they would make her unconscious. She settled her eyes on Veronica and pulled out a chair for herself to sit on.

Keeping her beautiful brown handbag on the table, she said in a convincing tone, "Believe me, Veronica, you are almost done! Don't push yourself this much for a job that hardly pays us pennies!"

Veronica's eyes got lifted from the file to see her blonde friend. Passing a dismissing nod, she dug her head again over those numbers pestering Bridget. Bridget's fingers ran over her forehead trying to find a way to pull her workaholic friend out of her work world.

She observed Veronica for a few seconds. She groaned in her mind, "Gosh! Those plump lips are not made to rot those numbers, but to kiss boys!”

She bit her thumbnail as she dived a bit deeper in her thought bubble, "I am damn sure, not only her lips, but her body is pure too!”

She tilted her head to the left, her eyes engrossed in Veronica as she said, pitying, "How come she is single all this while? I mean she is already 24 and yet had no boy holding her hand, having a boy in bed is a far distant possibility!”

Veronica grabbed the mug and brought it closer to her mouth. Having a sip, she kept the mug back on the table and continued with her work.

Bridget poured a question out of the blue, "Do you read romance novels, darling?" Veronica lifted her face and passed a perplexed look to her friend before mouthing, "WHAT?!”

Bridget thought her question was a general one and she decided to narrow it down for Veronica. She said, "I am not talking about those wet love stories, but the ones where the girl and boy just keep on waiting for their true love to arrive!" She made that long statement in a single breath with her expressions changing from a naughty smile to a disgusting look as she reached the end of the sentence.

“I need to work!" Treating Bridget with an angry look and curt words, Veronica got back to work.

Bridget drew in a sharp breath as she thought, "I thought this girl might be following those stupid romance novels idea and preserving her purity! But it's worse than that! Neither does this girl know R of romance or B of boys! She is leading a pathetic, robotic life!”

Bridget averted her hands from the table and started moving them like a robot as she said in her mind, "I am Veronica Cooper, a specially programmed robot of Perfumerza Company. I eat, drink, sleep and even breathe for this company!”

Veronica was not used to Bridget's silence. Bridget was a chatterbox whose battery never ran out of power. Apart from her silence, Bridget's strange movements were captured by Veronica from the corner of her eye. She raised her head and said, "Bridget, you don't have to wait for me! You can leave!”

Bridget quit her absurd, robotic moves and said dramatically, "What did you say? Leave you?" She took a pause. Veronica nodded.

Bridget continued, her voice growing sharper, "In case you are so engrossed in your work, let me remind you, no one is there in the office at 3 A.M. right now!" She emphasized, her hands catching her words and doing gestures, "It's just two of us, Veronica! How can I let you go alone to your home?”

Veronica took another sip of the coffee. The warmth was fading away, in contrast the level of the coffee in the mug, barely dropped down to half. After gutting down a few sips, she said, "It may take an hour or two. So, you can leave Bridget, don't wait up!"

Bridget's mouth hung open on hearing the time. She frowned, "I wish I could, but you see there's no one in the office that could accompany you home and you don't even have a boyfriend whom you can call and have a romantic drive to home, huh!"

Veronica's hand clenched the pencil hard. She struck the pencil on a table with a force that had the coffee inside the mug shaking and snapped in, "We are not having that boyfriend discussion again! Leave me alone!"

Veronica yelped in her mind, "Why can't she understand I can't have a boyfriend even if I wish to? Even if I have one, I fear that my life will eat him away! My fate forgot or deliberately didn't insert LOVE in my life! I can be definitely called as a cursed one who is bound to stay alone!”