Andrew woke in darkness.

He sat up slowly. Memory slowly filtered back and he raised his hand to his neck. The thick mane there made it hard to be completely certain, but he seemed to be unmarked. Maybe it hadn't really happened? But no. The room he was in, only dimly seen in near-utter blackness, was not his apartment.

A door swung open, spilling dim light into the room.

“You're awake then.” The voice was familiar, it was the voice of whoever had attacked him last night.

“Yeah,” he said cautiously, still a little uncertain. He suddenly had the urge to run his tongue over his fangs and check their length. When he gave in and tried it they seemed unchanged, but then would he notice a small increase when they were already more than an inch long? They did seem to be a little bit sharper. Or was he imagining it?

“I'm Jake,” said the other and stepped into the room. He was a dog. Something short-furred and square muzzled. A boxer? Andrew wasn't familiar enough with canines to be sure. Male, and with a broad frame that should have been bulky and muscular, but instead was thin to the point of emaciation. Andrew could count his ribs, if he wanted to. “I'm really sorry,” said Jake. “I... I have to feed sometimes. I don't want to. I'm sorry I attacked you.”

Andrew shrugged. What could he say to that? “It's okay”? But it wasn't okay. “Y-you're a... a vampire.” he finally said.

“Yeah.”

“And... and I'm one too now?”

Jake nodded. “Yeah.”

Andrew tried to figure out how he should feel. Right now he mostly felt numb. It had happened. He'd been assaulted and... and killed. And now he was undead. It was real. But it didn't seem real, it seemed distant, like a story that happened to somebody else. “So...” He tried to formulate and question, but he wasn't sure what to ask.

“I'm supposed to take care of you. I guess that means I should explain how the vampire thing works. And about the pack, though you're not really going to be part of that.” Jake came in and sat down next to the bed. “So. Vampires. You're undead. If you try to take your pulse right now you'll find you don't have one. You're not breathing either. You're stronger now than you used to be, and faster. You won't get tired in the normal sense. You heal very fast if you get hurt and you're pretty hard to kill. That's all the good stuff. The bad stuff... that's the feeding.” He paused, then continued. “No normal food, you won't be able to eat it if you try. I know some of the pack still drink, though alcohol doesn't do anything to you, no getting drunk, unless you want to feed off a drunkard, that'll do it. But anyhow, other liquids don't hurt but you can't get anything out of them. Uhm. You have to feed, or you go crazy. That's just... how it is. You can go a long time without. I go about two weeks, usually. The pack hunts almost every night. I... I don't hunt with them, you probably won't either, there are a few of us that don't.”

“Why not?”

“For lots of reasons. Some of them... Well, most of them it's because they don't like to kill. With the whole pack feeding, they always kill. If you hunt alone you can take less.”

“You were going to kill me though!”

“Yeah, well... it's not the killing. I don't like it. I don't... I don't really want to. But that's not what... Augh. I don't have to explain myself to you! You're my thrall, I don't have to do anything.”

“Thrall?”

“I made you. Maybe I didn't mean to, but it was my blood that made you a vampire. So you're mine. I can control you, if I want to.”

Andrew gave the thin canine a dubious look. Control him?

“Get up,” said Jake. Andrew blinked. And then he felt... something. A kind of pressure. He didn't really want to get up, but something was pushing him to rise. He fought against it, but found himself climbing to his feet anyway. Jake grinned. “You have to do whatever I want you to.”

“Great,” said Andrew sourly. He sat back down on the bed. “And what exactly is this pack thing?”

“The pack.” Jake shrugged. “It's the biggest group of vampires in the city. Chris leads it. He's the one who made most of us. Other than you everybody's some kind of carnivore, mostly canines, so they hunt together. Makes it easier for most of them. You'll probably meet most of them eventually, since they all live here.”

“Where's here?”

“An abandoned hotel. Everything's boarded up, which is pretty good for us, since sunlight hurts us. There are plenty of empty rooms and some of the utilities still work, Chris made some kind of arrangement. You'll have to scrounge up a mattress and stuff like that, they're pretty bare, but you'll have your pick, really.”

“What, you're not going to let me go home?”

Jake snorted. “You can do whatever you damn well want, frankly. But you can't go out in sunlight anymore. You got a night job or something?”

Andrew blinked. He hadn't thought about his job. He'd already missed a day of work so it was probably gone anyway. But if he couldn't stand sunlight anymore... even if he somehow could get there, there was too much light, too many windows. He sighed.

“Yeah, that's what I thought. You can't go back to work, so you don't have an income anymore. So no paying rent. So you'll be kicked out of whatever rat-hole you've been living in pretty soon. You'll probably want to go get whatever junk you own out of there before then.”

Andrew flopped back on the bed and closed his eyes. He heard Jake getting to his feet. The canine stood there for a moment, looking down at Andrew. Then he left. Andrew sighed. He still didn't know what to feel. He'd wished for an escape from his dull, depressing life, but not like this! He lay there, wallowing in depression, for some time.

Eventually, though, boredom drove him to get up and explore. As Jake had said, the building proved to be an old hotel. Andrew could hear people moving around behind several of the closed doors he passed, but he didn't venture to disturb them. He wasn't sure he wanted to meet any of his fellow vampires. Especially not if they were all carnivores. After exploring the lobby and the lower floors he found a set of stairs and climbed. The rooms on the first floor seemed to be mostly full, and there were plenty of signs of life, or perhaps it should be unlife, he thought, on the second floor. The third seemed to be mostly empty. And the fourth proved to be entirely unoccupied. Most of the rooms didn't even have doors anymore, and the three he found stood open, revealing empty rooms. He ventured up to the fifth, and highest floor, but that proved to have only two large suites, and one of them was very obviously occupied. So he retreated to the floor below. He would claim a room there. They were all in various stages of dusty decomposition, but cleaning a room up would at least give him something to do.