Jack awoke on a dusty couch in a dimly lit room.

He squinted his eyes as he waited for the room to come into focus. The pain in his arm was still there but had died down quite a bit.

As his vision cleared, Jack felt his head pounding as he let out a weak cough.

"Ooo! Mark, he's awake!" said a very nasally voice on his left side.
Jack tried a force out a word, but all that came out was a barely audible wheeze.

"Shhh, don't try to talk. You need to keep resting if you're going to heal." said the voice. "Your temperature and heart rate are back to normal. Infection is down. You should be ready to go by tomorrow. Oooh, and take this." The blurry figure handed him a glass of water and an oddly colored pill.

Jack contemplated if he should pretend he didn't speak English. He remembered that he had done that before and it only ended up getting him into more trouble.

"Wh-what?" Jack asked, understandably hesitant and confused.

"Just take it! I'm a devilishly handsome sparkling vampire so basically a trained professional in human anatomy and medicine. That's just a sugar pill, but I enchanted it with my magic!"

Jack's heart skipped a beat. Shit. He walked right into the house of a real vampire. The vampire looked surprisingly less threatening than what he had heard. He was wearing suspenders and seemed to be fully invested in every word he said. He seemed far too enthusiastic to be in the middle of the apocalypse. Then again, his species was the one thriving off of everything. Jack reached for his knife in his bag, but the familiar weight on his left shoulder was nowhere to be found

The overly happy vampire clearly noticed his concern and met it with a friendly chuckle.

"Don't worry, I'm a vegan! I don't eat anything with a face! I generally tear the face off first."

This only made Jack more anxious. The vampire softened his voice, knelt down, and put a hand on Jack's shoulder.

"Listen. I know things seem pretty bad right now but you have to trust me. It's safe here. You're going to get better and you'll be back on your adventures in no time. You had a pretty bad septic infection but its pretty much gone now. I just need you to work with me here and take the magical pill."

Jack nervously gulped down the pill.

"Okay, good. Now try to lay still and breathe."

Jack tried to lay still and stared at the aged ceiling. He felt a refreshing warmness start in his toes and slowly work its way up his legs and eventually to the formerly green mess of hair on his head. His headache, along with some untreated and forgotten cuts bruises on his body seemed to disappear.

Jack smiled, impressed. He had never been healed with real magic, only hurt with it. As the warm feeling moved through his face he instinctively scrunched up his nose, receiving a chuckle from the friendly vampire.

After that, he sat up on the couch. The vampire held out his hand.

"My name's Enis by the way."

"Um...Jack. Thanks."

"Oh, and that's Mark." Enis said and pointed to a muscular man with salmon colored hair, about Jack's age sitting in the window. Jack wasn't sure if Mark was Asian or not, but thought it would be rude to ask. Despite being human, Mark looked far deadlier than Enis. He had a large knife and a shotgun on his belt and was wearing clean, but very tattered clothes. Large scars, old and new, decorated every inch of skin that was revealed.

Mark looked back and glared at the two of them. Jack nervously smiled back. Mark quickly turned his head back around and continued to stare out the window at the pouring rain.

"He's not much of a talker." Enis chirped. "Oh, Jack, do you want some dinner! You look like you're going to blow away!"

"Yes! I mean...uh...yeah...definitely." Jack said, trying not to look too vulnerable. It felt nice to hear someone else say his name for the first time in almost a year.