Though I have been trained in both offensive and defensive combat skills, I did not see the danger coming. Nor had I any idea that I was attacked ow who the attacker was. There was only a swift movement, fast, much too fast, and the sudden, searing pain.

I burned for a long time, not knowing what was happening to me. Eventually, the pain receded, and to my surprise, my heart stopped beating. When I opened my eyes, I was still confused.

"My name is Riley. Welcome to your new life."

The guy was younger than me, obviously, but his skin was white and his eyes blazing red. He looked dangerous, and he was. Before he could continue talking to me, something caught his eyes. Very quickly – but my eyes were able to follow his movement – he got up and moved towards the source of his irritation. I watched when he broke up the fight between a girl and an older man, only that they had the same smooth, white skin; the red eyes and the strange way they moved.

I got on my feet and tried to get some orientation. There were more than a dozen of people in the building, a warehouse or something. I scanned the room, realizing that it was night outside; there was no light source in the building, but still I was able to recognize every detail. I was able to think several thoughts at the same time: Checking the room, bringing me in a strategic position in case I would be attacked, wondering about my perfect eyesight and realizing that something bad had happened to me and that obviously, I was in trouble. And that I was unbelievable thirsty, while there was a smell in the air that pulled me towards its source, promising relief to my painful burning throat.

The guy who introduced himself as Riley found me again.

"I know you are irritated, but everything will be ok. I glad that I found you, because I'm short on numbers and time is running out. There will be a fight soon, and I know that you are a fighter. I can give you what you want."

I answered nothing but followed him. That seemed to be the deal here: I cooperate and he will provide me with food and shelter.

"I'm no effing mercenary," I wanted to answer, but it hit me without warning.

We have stepped outside of the building. There was a van parked, and Riley opened the side door. I was lunging at the woman before I even saw her, I acted automatically, my body knew somehow what there was to do, and I had my teeth at her throat before she was able to scream. I drank her blood, and never had I drunk anything similar before. I drank until she was empty.

I woke from my frenzy when Riley moved behind me. I turned around to face him, going in a crouch, ready to attack. He smiled.

"Yes, you will be very useful. Don't worry; your new life will be better than everything you know. We are strong, and we don't die. However, we can still be killed, and there are some others out there who are going to kill us soon. But we will defend ourselves, we will make the first move, we will seek them out and destroy them before they have a chance to destroy us…"

He went on with his speech, but I was to wary to let him take my whole attention. I scanned the area like I had done with the building before. We were somewhere in the outskirts of the City, near the water. A crashed car was to the left of me, to the right the van with the now dead girl whose blood I drank.

Two pale spots caught my attention. They were standing about half a mile away, on the roof of another building, positioned in a way that they could watch us with their eyes just over the rim of the roof without the need to kneel or crouch. If I hadn't my training, if I haven't been to Afghanistan and Iraq, I wouldn't have noticed them. Suddenly, I knew that I wouldn't have noticed the two small faces before the pain. I didn't turn my head or showed any other sign that I had seen the two faces up there.

I just turned around and went back into the building, regardless of Riley, who was still explaining about what I was.

A vampire, he said.

Yes, that made sense, since I drained all the blood from the woman, killing her in that process. She was not the first person I had killed. Oddly, she was the first one I had a personal reason for: I had unbelievable thirsty, in fact, I was still thirsty, and her blood was able to quench my thirst.

Nothing had changed, then. I was still a harbinger of death. Even after I had left the fighting troops, when I left the military to join a private software company to write some code, in peace in front of the computer, not under the scorching sun or the freezing cold of some Asian deserts, but in an air-conditioned office in Seattle, I had not fulfilled to escape the killing, then the software was still used in drones, and I was still a killer.

The best of things are three, they say. Now I was employed to someone else, my manager was Riley, and I still was supposed to kill. Well, fuck Riley! He could have asked before, and whatever his crusade was, I had no interest in it.

The other vampires ignored me. I went into a corner to be separate from the steady stream of talking, shouting and bickering that was going on in the warehouse. There was a girl, maybe 15 or 16 years old.

"Hey, I'm Alex. Nice to meet you."

She looked at me, obviously not used to a friendly voice. She looked scared.

"I'm Bree," she told me.

"Looks like we have been conscripted to a war which is not ours to fight."

She looked at me.

"I'm not going to fight," I assured her, "and I can protect you if you want."

Her red eyes looked at me. There was a kind of relief in them. Riley was an idiot, so much had I found out for myself. He was obviously gathering an army of the undead, which he told me. He was going to lose the battle, because he was an idiot. I wondered what drove him.

I sat next to Bree, leaning the back to the wall like her, without feeling the need to do so.

"We can't sleep," she informed me.

"We drink blood, we have extremely good eyesight, we can literally hear the grass growing and we are obviously very strong," I summarized my knowledge. "We are thirsty for blood all the time, and if we smell it, we lose our heads."

"You got it right," she told me.

"I think we are pretty cool," I told her, to cheer her up. I needed someone to watch my back in this mayhem.

"We are mindless killers," she said.

"Four days ago I had a meeting in a fancy office downtown. Some extremely important people were there, generals of the army and the air force; engineers and executives. All we did was creating brand new ways to fight the enemy. The terrorists, you know. The bad ones. But I have been out there. The bad ones tend to hide behind the innocent, and the generals and the executives tend to ignore the innocent. Each shoot means something. It means happy generals and happy executives and dead children. Ten minutes ago I killed a human. It wasn't my first, but it was the first one I don't count against me. So, I'm a very mindful killer."

I smiled at her.

"I was a vegan, because I didn't want that animals had to suffer because of me," she stated.

"And now you drink human blood."

She looked sad.

"You were right," I reassured her. "Not wanting someone to suffer is always a good thing and a good base for your own actions. But humans are the only lifeform which is not in danger of extinction, and they hurt each other, the animals and the whole planet. I think I don't mind taking their blood."

Bree said nothing. I looked at her from the side. What I told her was to give her some other perspective than the gloomy atmosphere around us. I wanted to show her some light.

"By the way, what about the sun? Can we go outside during the day?" I asked her.

"Yes we can. But it's better when it's cloudy. In the sun, we glitter like disco balls"

"You are kidding me!"