When morning came, the electric collar around Igor's neck hummed with warning—a gentle vibration that would escalate to searing pain if he didn't acknowledge it within thirty seconds. He pressed the button at his throat before even opening his eyes. Six o'clock, exactly. Another day in service to the house of Lennox.

  He learned early on not to challenge the collar; he witnessed, from second-hand experience, that the shock collar could bring others to the ground, writhing in pain and suffering second-degree burns on their necks.

  Igor rose from his narrow bed, the weight of his folded and tied wings heavy against his back—a constant, clunky reminder of both his birthright and his bondage.

  He hadn’t tried to fly in years. Not since the mines. The old injury in his left wing hadn’t healed right; the membrane tugged too tightly at the bone, and any attempt to extend it fully sent lightning bolts of pain shooting up his spine. But truthfully, even if the wings worked, they’d never get far. The collar locked into the spine plate that restrained his shoulders, cinching his arms and wings against his back during work hours. “Too much temptation,” the overseers used to say with a smirk. As if a few flaps could carry him out of a thousand-foot shaft. As if freedom were ever more than a cruel theory, dangling just out of reach.

  In the mines, there had been no sky—only black rock pressing in from all sides, damp with condensation, stinking of sweat and old blood. The tunnels narrowed in places so tightly he had to crawl, wings pinned uselessly against his body. The first time he’d tried to spread them—to push off and reach a ledge just out of arm’s reach—he’d slipped on the gravel and landed hard. Something tore deep in the left wing. He hadn’t screamed; there was no point. The overseers saw the injury and strapped him tighter, a curved brace clamping his wings to his back “for safety.” They told him he was lucky they hadn’t cut them off like they did to the escape-prone ones.

  After that, he stopped trying. Even when the pain faded to a deep throb, even when there was room to stretch, the thought of moving those wings made his stomach turn. What use was flight when the ceiling was a cage and the sky a myth? He began to think of them as extra limbs—useless ones, dead weight. They ached sometimes when it rained, a phantom reminder of what might’ve been. But mostly, they just hung there, like broken promises.

  In the dim light of his quarters, which was barely larger than a storage closet, his crimson eyes quickly adjusted. Superior night vision was one of the many "gifts" that made Alucards valuable as servants and workers. Along with this, they could also detect even the faintest traces of toxic gas, a trait that had once made them indispensable in the coal mines. He shuddered at the memory. The damp, suffocating darkness. The constant fear of cave-ins. The stench of firedamp that clung to everything, carrying with it promises of silent, invisible death. No, he would endure any indignity in this manner before returning to that hell.

  Igor still remembered the way the dust clung to his throat, thick as grief, coating his lungs with every breath. The mine shafts had been narrow, barely tall enough for a boy to crawl through, let alone a winged teenager with bones too long and shoulders too wide. The foreman had no patience for biology—wings were just another tool, like a pickaxe or a gas mask. When the firedamp grew thick, it was Igor who went first. His crimson eyes, so prized for their sensitivity, scanned for invisible threats while his knees bled on the jagged stone. He had learned early that the gas had a smell—something sour and metallic, like old pennies left too long in the rain. Some Alucards didn’t smell it in time. Their screams echoed for hours.

  There had been others, too—boys younger than him, girls with shredded hands and raw, flaking wings. They whispered stories to each other during shift changes, when the foremen weren’t listening. One swore she’d seen sunlight once, that it made the veins in her wings glow gold. She carved lines into the rock to count how many days she’d lasted. Igor never asked how many marks were left unfinished. When the collapse came, it was a hush before the tremor in his fingertips, a pressure in the air, and then the ceiling gave way like paper. He'd carried two children out on his back that day, wings torn and useless. No medals. Just more shifts. More gas. More death. He still woke some nights to the smell of blood and coal, his hands curled in fists, his collar pulsing like it remembered too.

  There was no word for the kind of silence that followed punishment shifts. Just the rhythmic drip of groundwater and the soft sobs of someone trying not to be heard. When Igor had spoken out—just once, when a younger Alucard collapsed from heatstroke—he’d been tethered to the hot pipe for twelve hours. The heat hadn’t burned skin, not quite, but it baked the body from within. His wings blistered at the joints, their membrane swelling and peeling like scorched fruit. No one looked at him afterward. Not out of cruelty, but out of fear. The kind of fear that taught you to keep your head down and your voice lower.

  Worst were the nights they dragged them above ground for inspections—lined up like livestock under floodlights, their wing joints pried open and measured. Too stiff? Too torn? Sent back for reassignment, or quietly erased. Igor learned to pass. To keep his body functional, his posture docile, his tone neutral. The overseers didn’t want to hear thoughts; they wanted production. But the thoughts never stopped. He’d carved them into the wall of his bunk with a rusted nail: names, dreams, memories, scraps of poems. Most were gone now, buried under years of soot and pain. But some lingered, like ghosts clinging to marrow. And in his quietest moments, Igor still mouthed them—just to remind himself he hadn’t always been a machine.

  Last, He hadn’t meant to slow down. His left wing had seized halfway through the haul, the membrane split along the outer vein from overextension. But the cart needed moving—twelve tons of compressed ore, and only four Alucards assigned to it. When Igor stumbled, the overseer didn’t shout. He just pulled the lever.

  The collar lit his nerves on fire.

  Igor collapsed, his face hitting shale. Behind him, someone screamed his name—Laz, maybe? Or Brim? He couldn't tell anymore. The world shrank to pulses of white-hot pain, the smell of scorched feathers, and the coppery taste of his blood. He remembered one thought clearly, cutting through the haze: If I die here, no one will even record it. Just a malfunctioning tool. A weight was written off.

  Later, as he lay in the infirmary with his wing stitched in jagged knots, a stranger had come. Pale suit, fine gloves. One of the buyers. “He’s high-yield,” the supervisor muttered. “Good bones, smart, a bit mouthy.” The buyer crouched beside Igor and tilted his chin up like inspecting an animal’s teeth. “We’ll take him,” he’d said. “House of Lennox could use another winged model.”

  That was how he left the mines. Not with freedom, but with a different kind of collar. Cleaner walls, softer commands—but the chain never broke. It only gleamed more convincingly.

  Igor caught his reflection in the small cracked mirror above his washbasin. Pale skin that has never seen enough sunlight. Wavy deep-red hair that he kept neatly swept to one side—one of the few choices about his appearance he was permitted to make. He was taller than most Alucards, lanky but strong from years of labor. His wings, large and bat-like, folded tightly against his spine, the membrane tissue a deep obsidian that absorbed rather than reflected light.

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  From the shelf beside his bed, he traced a finger along the spines of his secret treasures: ancient vampire novels, brittle with age and exorbitantly expensive at the bazaar where he'd found them. Dracula. The Hunger. 'Salem's Lot. Each one a portal to another world that both resembled and diverged from his own reality.

  The similarities between fictional vampires and his own kind had always fascinated him. The pale skin, the unusual eye colors, the connection to bats. Yet vampires in stories could shed their wings, could transform at will. Alucards remained forever trapped in their hybrid form, neither fully human nor fully... whatever they had once been. And they certainly didn't drink blood.

  The distant sounds of the manor coming to life interrupted his thoughts. The morning routine was unforgiving, and seven rules governed his existence:

  No intimate conversations between servants, Alucards, and their masters shall occur.

  Servants shall only eat after their masters, and only when granted permission to do so.

  The curfew is at 20:00.

  The rising time is at 6:00.

  Servants must wear their electric collars at all times, except during shower time.

  The electric collar's alarm will activate at 6:00, vibrating and escalating into various shocks until the servant wakes and presses the button on the door.

  There shall be no mating between humans and Alucards. Any violation of this rule is punishable by death.

  That final rule—there shall be no mating between humans and Alucards—was not unique to the Lennox estate. It was federal law, etched into the Servitude Code and punishable by immediate execution, without trial. The justification was always the same: to preserve the genetic boundary between master and servant, between citizen and commodity. To prevent the "dilution" of the human race. In cities like Seattle, violations were rare and publicly punished, broadcast as warnings. Igor remembered one such execution broadcast on the communal screen in the mines, the image of an Alucard kneeling in the dust, hands bound, eyes locked on a human woman sobbing just out of reach.

  He’d been thirteen. He hadn’t understood the full meaning yet, only the terror in Alucard’s eyes and the unbearable silence that followed the shot. The miners hadn't spoken for hours afterward. Love, even imagined, was another forbidden luxury.

  Igor dressed quickly in his servant's uniform—a charcoal gray suit with special accommodations for his wings—and made his way to Mistress Maisie's chambers. Of all the Lennox family, she alone treated him with something approaching respect, though he knew better than to mistake basic courtesy for equality.

  He knocked softly at her door.

  "Enter," came the sleepy command from within.

  Mistress Maisie sat at her vanity, her chocolate-brown hair tumbling in loose waves down her back. Even half-awake, there was a quiet intensity to her hazel eyes that Igor had never seen in the other Lennoxes. She was only 20, five years his junior, yet carried herself with a naturalness that made her seem older.

  "Igor, bring me my makeup," she said, her voice still thick with sleep.

  He retrieved the ornate bag from its place on the shelf and presented it with both hands, head slightly bowed as protocol demanded. "Here is your bag, Mistress."

  Maisie took it from him with surprising gentleness, her fingertips brushing his for the briefest moment. She opened the bag and began sifting through its contents.

  "Red or black today, Igor?" she asked, holding up two tubes of lipstick. "For my lips."

  Igor hesitated, caught between the rule against intimate conversation and the implicit command to answer. "I think it's your decision in the end, Mistress, but... the red suits you better. It complements your hair."

  A small smile played at the corners of her mouth as she twirled a lock of hair between her fingers. "Why, thank you, Igor." She applied the red substance to her lips with practiced precision, then turned to him with an expectant look. "Don't I look gorgeous?"

  Igor shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his gaze carefully averted. "Mistress Lennox, I can't confirm that... as I'm forbidden to."

  Her smile faltered, just slightly. Something in her eyes—disappointment? Frustration? Igor couldn't be sure. Human emotions remained a mystery to him, despite his years of service.

  Maisie wore a flowing purple blouse that draped elegantly over her slender frame, paired with tailored black slacks. Her hair was gathered in a deliberately careless bun, a few strands escaping to frame her face. The yellow eyeshadow she'd applied highlighted the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, and the red lipstick stood out vibrantly against her fair skin.

  The truth was, she was beautiful—undeniably so. But that was a dangerous thought for an Alucard servant, one that Igor quickly buried beneath layers of practiced indifference.

  His future was already mapped out for him, as it was for all his kind. By thirty-five, he would be assigned a mate from among his species, expected to produce offspring that would inherit his servitude. His people's delayed puberty and prolonged fertility, from twenty-five to sixty, was yet another trait that made them valuable commodities in this world. A longer breeding window meant more potential servants.

  The thought of being paired, of being forced into a union designed only to produce more servants, made him sick. At thirty-five, he would be assigned a mate, a woman, an Alucard like him, though he couldn’t imagine anyone he could stand to share his life with in such a way. A breeding arrangement, he called it, not a partnership in life. The thought twisted in his stomach, a gnawing inevitability that his future would mirror his past—days spent in silence, in submission, in the same suffocating routine. No love. No choice. No escape.

  He’d heard whispers from the older Alucards—the ones who had long since given up any hope of freedom—that a mate would be “a balm for the spirit.” But for Igor, the idea felt like nothing more than another form of imprisonment, a way for the system to ensure the cycle never ended. A tool for reproduction. He had seen the deadened eyes of Alucards who had accepted their fate, who had allowed themselves to go numb, to stop questioning. But he couldn't bring himself to do that. Not yet.

  The practice sickened him, but there was no escape from it. The Alucard population dwindled year by year, not just from their unusual fertility cycles, but from the systemic oppression that drove many to early graves—or worse, to take their own lives rather than continue in bondage.

  And then there was Maisie. He watched her, caught between the pull of what he’d been taught and the undeniable weight of her kindness. She didn’t see him—she saw only what was in front of her: a servant. But there were moments, fleeting and quiet, when she treated him differently, almost as if she felt the gap between them without fully understanding it. She didn’t realize it, but every soft word, every touch, made it harder for him to bury the part of him that still dreamed of something else. A future that wasn’t preordained.

  "It's time for breakfast, Mistress," Igor said, breaking the momentary silence. "Your family will be gathering soon."

  Maisie nodded, her expression shifting to one of resignation. "Very well."