"Now it's your turn," Victoria said, gesturing to the petri dish sticking out of the wall.
"Ok," I said as I bit my hand. I could feel my canines sharpen and stab into my hand. I clenched my fist and held it over the glass surface, and blood fell onto it.
It retracted back into the wall again, and the same female voice said, "Sanguis family member confirmed. Access granted."
The metal surface below the column of floor buttons lowered, revealing buttons for basement floor levels. Victoria pressed 'B9'. I watched as the floors were counted down to 'B9'.
When the door opened, Victoria walked out with purpose again. We walked down a hall, turned left, and arrived at a doctor office looking place that said on the door, "Vampire Registration Center."
We opened the door and walked in. The person at the desk was an older woman wearing red scrubs and sitting at a computer. She said, "Do you have an appointment?" In a nasally voice.
"No, Doris, not today. This one was an accidental, unsanctioned rebirth," Victoria said.
"I see," Doris said, her eyebrows raising. She grabbed some papers from behind the counter and stapled them together. She handed the bundle to Victoria and said, "You'll have to fill out an incident report. You have a week to bring it back. I'm documenting you as the progenitor, so we'll know who to track down if you don't fill it out."
"I'll be sure to fill it out," Victoria said with a forced smile.
The woman looked at her computer and pushed up her glasses. "Victoria Sanguis. Progenitor vampire to… " She looked up at me. "What's your name, darling? First name only."
"Uh, Dylan," I said.
"Do you have living identification on you, Dylan? Driver's license will do," she said, smiling.
"Yeah, here you go," I said, handing over my driver's license.
She took it from my hand and put it next to her on the desk. "Ok, here we go," she said, as she furiously typed on her keyboard for a few seconds. Then she ran the license through a machine. The machine spat out another card. She handed both cards to me. "That'll be it. Here is your living identification back and your new unliving identification. Now step right through that door. Your assessor is ready for you."
I took the unliving identification. It had the same picture as my driver's license on it, but my name read, "Dylan Sanguis." Did they change every vampire's last name to Sanguis when they joined the Vampire Association?
I didn't have anymore time to think about it as I walked through the door, and another person in red scrubs was waiting for me on the other side. "Hi, my name's Walter. I'll be your assessor for today. Your progenitor may view the assessment if you give them permission."
"I give her permission," I said.
"Very good," Walter said. He gestured for me to sit on a medical patient chair. I did. He grabbed a couple things off a metal tray. "Ok, we're going to take a little blood here. You'll just feel a little prick."
"She wasn't feeling a little prick earlier," I said. I put my hand up for a high five, but Walter just stared at me blank faced. Victoria didn't laugh either. She just glared at me. I lowered my hand. "Tough crowd."
I felt a mild sting as a needle pricked my finger. Walter squeezed the blood out of my finger into a small vial and put it in a machine. The machine made a whirring noise, and Walter looked at a computer screen that was connected to it.
"What? What does that mean?" Walter said. He showed the computer screen to me and Victoria.
It read:
[Vampire Type: Omni-Vampire]
[Feeding Method: All]
[Potential: Infinite]
"I've never heard of an omni-vampire before, but I can only guess it means you're a hybrid of every type of vampire based on the fact that it says you can use all feeding methods," Walter said. "This is incredible! I'll be famous for discovering a new type!"
"Calm down there, buddy," I said. "I just want to get assessed and get out of here. Am I free to go?"
"Yeah, that's fine. Just give me your unliving identification," Walter said. I did it, and he ran it through another machine. When he handed it back to me, my vampire type and feeding method were listed on the card. I put it in my wallet.
I looked at Victoria. "Let's get out of here."
"Finally," she said. "We have a lot of work to do before you enter vampire sect training."
"Vampire sect training?" I said as we walked out of the office, back through the hallways, and into the elevator. She hit floor 'B3'.
"Yeah, vampire sect training. You train to become part of the vampire sect, and you compete against other sects to maintain or establish vampire supremacy," she said, like it was information I should be downloading into my brain.
"So there are other sects? Who are the other sects?" I said.
When we got off on the floor, the interior was significantly different from the previous one. This one looked like a massive gym, with an animal habitat in the back.
"There are dozens of sects, and each of them fall under certain categories. Some of the categories include demihumans, beastfolk, fae, and undead, but there are others. Vampires are part of the undead category," she said.
"And there are competitions? What for?" I said.
"They determine where we rank among non humans and who we have authority over and who has authority over us as well as control over the portals, but we'll go into that later," she said. "Dragons are on the top and have been so for centuries. We have a not-so-friendly rivalry with them, but I'm hoping we can knock them from their pedestal one of these days."
We were walking through the gym, and a guy at the squat rack turned around and said, "Don't let Victoria fill your head with fantasies. We've never been at the top, and we never will. The sooner you accept that, the easier your unlife will be."
He was wearing workout clothes that looked like they were lifted directly out of the 80's. Maybe they were. With how long vampires lived, I wouldn't be surprised if this guy was just multiple decades behind the times.
"Thanks. I'll be sure to take your advice," I said sarcastically.
"Don't say I didn't warn you," he said.
"Don't listen to Brutus. He can't get over his last defeat," Victoria said.
"If you don't mind me asking, what kind of vampire are you?" I asked.
"Wasn't it obvious when the first thing I tried to do was suck you off? I'm a sex vampire. I feed off life essence through sex," she said. "Well, and blood, but every vampire can feed that way. But I prefer my victims not to know I fed off them."
"Ohhh," I said. "I thought you were a groupie. And to think I felt sorry for you."
"Hey, a girl's gotta eat," she said.
"I guess that's fair," I laughed. It was such a ridiculous concept to me that I had to laugh. She was going to feed off giving me head. Wow. What a world I lived in now.
We got to the back of the gym, where the animal habitat was. It looked like it had an airlock system to enter it. Probably so the animals couldn't get out when you opened the door. The habitat was currently empty. It was huge though. It looked like it could house a t-rex. Maybe it could.
Victoria opened the door and shoved me through it. She closed it and locked it from the outside.
"What are you doing?" I said.
She went over to the wall and started pressing buttons. The inner door opened, so anything that entered the habitat could now get to me.
"I'm throwing you to the wolves," she said.
She pressed another few buttons, and a wall rose up. A dozen wolves came running out of it. They saw me and immediately rushed at me, baring their teeth.