#vampire pet

They stepped through a set of double doors into what looked like a disused lobby, the counter at the end unoccupied and the lights only half turned on.

Walking on the leash with the large man was nothing like walking on the leash had been before. Where before, he’d only had to keep up and things were fine, the man in the white t-shirt seemed to delight in tugging Jules along whenever he could, and Jules’s only comfort was that as long as he stayed behind the man , the tugs put pressure on the back of his neck instead of the front where it would have choked him.

Hauled along quickly and unbalanced by the man’s vicious periodic tugs sideways on the leash, Jules found himself disoriented almost as soon as they’d crossed into the series of glaring white-tiled hallways that split off from the lobby. He was mostly certain he could find his way out again, but only mostly, which, in combination with the way the fluorescent lights glinting off tile reminded him of the back rooms of the blood bank, made him feel even sicker.

It was a relief to come to a halt until he raised his eyes from the floor and realized the room they’d brought him to held what looked like a hospital bed, tricked out with more straps than he’d ever seen on a bed at an actual hospital. He stopped dead in his tracks, only to be pulled forward by the most vicious tug on the leash yet.

He stumbled forward several feet, and the man who had bought him caught him, his hands as gentle as they’d been before.

“It’s alright,” he said, squeezing Jules’s shoulder. “I know this place can be frightening, but almost none of this stuff is original. And even what we kept, we’ve updated.”

Updated from what? The man seemed to think he knew what this place was, but his head had been spinning too hard to make sense of it on the way through the halls. All he knew was that it was white and gleaming and it made him feel sick. He tilted his head to the side, making a muffled noise of confusion through the muzzle.

The man laughed. “Those guys really did do a number on you, didn’t they? Don’t worry, sweet. As soon as we know you’re safe, we’ll get you all patched up.”

He slapped Jules’s cheek lightly again, the half-healed skin stinging dully behind what couldn’t even really be called a blow. Jules flinched away.

The man in the t-shirt tugged hard on the leash again, pulling Jules away and toward the bed. “Get up there,” he ordered gruffly, “And hold still.”

Jules looked toward the first man, but he just gestured toward the bed, pulling the control for Jules’s shock collar from his pocket. Jules swallowed hard and scrambled to follow the order, half bowing at both men so they’d know he was listening.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, but before he could twist to lie down on his own, he was being manhandled, the man with the leash shoving and dragging at Jules’s body until he was lying exactly where the man wanted him.

He felt himself begin to tremble, lying there on his back.

The man who’d brought him here stepped forward, beside his head, and waved the controller in front of his face. “Now, I know you can hold still without this, but it’s only fair that you know it’s ready in case you misbehave.”

Jules’s breath was ragged, puffing in and out of his nose fast and sharp as the muzzle made breathing through his mouth hard. He nodded, meeting the man’s eyes and hoping it would be obvious he meant it.

The other man had removed his leash and was strapping him down to the bed, binding his legs at the ankles, shins, and thighs, crossing his hips and his stomach, pinning his bound arms sharply against his sides, and, at last, securing his shoulders so tightly to the bed that he couldn’t dream of pulling away.

“Good,” the man with the remote said, sounding pleased. “Now let’s get that muzzle off, huh?”

Jules didn’t even have time to feel relief before the large man’s hands were locked onto the sides of his skull, squeezing threateningly and holding his head still. The man with the remote pocketed it and reached up to unclasp the muzzle around Jules’s face. Then the large man was shoving his head down onto the bed and binding it in place with another tight leather strap.

When the large man removed the muzzle, he did it in one hard, sharp motion, ripping it away from the places his skin had begun to heal around the leather and leaving jagged lines where the straps had been, blood beading up from the wounds too slowly to drip away while he was held motionless.

Jules cried out, his body instinctively trying to curl around the pain, but his head couldn’t move.

The man who had bought him sounded almost sympathetic. “Open your mouth,” he said, his voice soft even as he gave the order.

Jules hadn’t needed to be told . He gasped for breath, his mouth gaping wide open as he dragged in as much air as he could. His face hurt. It hurt.

The big man moved fast, shoving another strap of leather into Jules’s mouth and wrenching downward, yanking his mouth open and then binding his jaw in place, as far down as he could get it. Jules’s eyes watered as the stretch made the wounds around his mouth pull, the pain less than that initial tear, but still radiating through his face.

The smaller man squeezed Jules’s shoulder. “Almost done,” he said, “We can start healing you in just a minute. Just a minute.”

The big man was still moving, retrieving some kind of implement from a drawer.

When Jules got a good glimpse at what looked like pliers, albeit shining, sterile ones, he keened in the back of his throat, a high-pitched sound of terror, and tried to pull away, only to find that the straps holding him were well beyond his meager strength.

The hand on his shoulder squeezed gently again. “It’s alright, sweetheart. It’s just while you’re in training. We don’t want any accidents. We’ll let you grow them back, eventually.”

Jules whined, his mouth held open so that he couldn’t form words.

The only answer came from the big man. He closed the tool around one of Jules’s fangs and yanked, twisting sharply and wrenching the fang out of his mouth in one quick, practiced motion.

Jules screamed, the taste of his own blood wrong on his tongue, nauseating and half-dead.

He dragged in a ragged breath, but the man had already clamped down on his other fang and Jules choked on his own blood in the moment of shock that followed the sudden, wrenching loss of his second fang. He gagged and coughed, fighting for breath as sluggish streams of his own noxious blood dripped down against the back of his throat.

The world in front of him was wobbly, the tears in his eyes blurring it to nothing, and his mind was completely overwhelmed with pain, blanking out everything else until the whole world was pain and white-blue fluorescent light. He wasn’t sure who released the straps binding his head, but he came back to himself as they loosened and forced his head up. He gagged again, fighting through it to spit out his blood before it could turn his aching stomach, coughing hard and pulling desperately and futilely at the strap around his shoulders as he tried to sit up farther.

The hand on his shoulder moved, and then someone was stroking his filthy hair back from his forehead. “Shhh. Shhh. There you go. There you go. It’s over now.”

Jules managed to drag in a gasping breath free of blood and burst suddenly into hard, wracking sobs that barely felt different than choking had.

“Let him have everything above the waist,” the man who had brought him here ordered. The straps loosened, and the man’s hands helped Jules sit, still gentle. Jules hunched forward, still crying. His bound hands drifted up toward his face, but stopped halfway, in the middle of the air, hovering below all the places too painful to touch.

The hand in his hair was back. “Shhh. Shhh, you’re alright. You’re alright.”

He wasn’t.

The hand in his hair was gentle. Part of him wanted to lean into it, to press himself sideways toward the stranger, even as much as he hated him.

“You’re alright,” the man repeated.

He wasn’t.

He bent forward farther, curling in toward his own knees as far as he could manage, and the hand slipped away.

“Come get me when he’s healing,” the man said, voice hardening as he stopped talking to Jules and addressed the other man instead, “Here - take the remote. But I’ll give him the speech, so don’t rough him up too much before I do. I don’t want him getting confused.”