1. You’re probably dead. Well, the real you, anyway. You knew that was going to happen eventually.

2. Someone, somewhere, gave you another chance.

3. Upside: you’re healthy now!

3. Downside: the King here (where is here again?) literally wants to eat you.

“Are you thinking over my proposal?”

Rey blinked back to the present. Right, he was here. In a luscious purple bedroom filled with the usual trappings of excess. 

With the Vampire King.

 

This was all going so alarmingly fast it was getting harder and harder to keep up.

Rey peered up through a fan of unfamiliar lashes, wringing his fingers together in his lap. They felt too long and too soft. “Does it hurt?” His voice sounded meek, even to him. “You know, when you…eat.”

The King, the tips of his sharp teeth peeking out just beyond his lip, seemed impossibly amused. Rey couldn’t quite put his finger on what made him look so…imperial, but he did. Proud and well-bred and infinitely smug. All stirred and blended together and deposited into a single person. “At first, yes. After a moment: definitely not.”

Rey frowned. He didn’t quite feel at home in this body yet, and his head was swimming. “And why do you need me for this?”

“Your smell is…singular.”

Rey squirmed. 

Singular? What the hell did that mean? 

“What’s in it for me?”

The King gestured around them. He seemed even more imposing now, cutting an unusually slender profile. All except for his impressive shoulders, emphasized by that long, long cape. His maroon eyes still made Rey want to crawl away and hide. They were almost serpentine. “This room will be yours, and yours alone. You will be showered with exceptional food and lavish gifts. No one, not even other heads of state, will be able to touch you. At my side, you will live a life of decadence and peace.”

Untouchable luxury. After a life of chronic illness on Earth, that sounded…wonderful.

“And in return, you expect…?” Rey began, voice still unsure.

The King gave a wide, lazy grin. “I am the only one to drink you. While I will never force you to allow a feeding, I will need to eat at least weekly.”

Rey couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all…familiar. 

He should’ve been utterly unmoored. He’d been reincarnated. There were vampires. The vampires wanted to eat him. 

Whoever him was, in this world. 

So why didn’t any of it surprise him the way it should have?

“I…would like to try,” Rey said, the words tumbling out before he’d truly considered the enormity of what he was agreeing to. “I can leave at any time? If I change my mind?”

The King’s irises flashed that same liquid silver from before. Rey thought his teeth seemed bigger. He looked just a touch off balance. “Of course. Your freedom is yours. But I do ask for a bit of notice, so I can secure another source that suits my tastes.”

“Right.” Oh, God. Tastes. “Did you need to…you know. Eat? Now?”

The King looked tempted. Enough so that a gentle breeze could’ve blown through the cavernous room and tipped him just over the line. But instead he pressed his pink lips into a thin line and gave a stern shake of his head, seemingly more to himself than Rey. “No, you are still recovering from your fever. If you are well, we will try in a fortnight. Until then, it will be your priority to get accustomed to your place here and recover your health. I will seek other means.”

Rey worried a cracked lip between his teeth. “Okay.”

The King nodded his farewell and swept from the room as quickly as he’d come. Rey watched him go with an overwhelming sense of incredulity.

He knew, deep down, somehow, that he wasn’t going back. 

But it still felt like he may open his eyes and realize this was all a lucid dream. That the fever had simply sent him on another in a long-line of trips to the emergency room. His parents would be beside him, fresh tears springing to their eyes when he woke up and asked for the millionth time: what happened? Then they would all leave for their real trip to Italy just a few days late and a few prescriptions heavier.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Rey said, quietly and to no one. “I tried to hang on for you.”

But he was alone in this silent room of spectacles. Just him and the only thing he’d ever wanted: an exquisitely healthy body. 

Except, as he was starting to realize, that didn’t mean so very much when it wasn’t shared by everyone else who’d wanted it with you.