Morning came with the same faint, ominous murmur. The electric collar around Igor's neck buzzed softly, a warning that echoed inside his skull, a cold promise of the pain he knew was coming. Thirty seconds. That was all he had to prove he was still under their control before the agony hit. His hand moved before he even thought, fingers brushing the smooth button at his throat. He pressed it without hesitation, a habit as natural as breathing, and only then did he dare open his eyes. Exactly six o'clock. Another day, chained to the house of Lennox. The thought left a bitter taste, like ashes in his mouth.
The collar hummed quietly against his skin, a low, steady thrum like a predator waiting to strike. He hadn't fought it, not anymore. He'd learned too young, a scared kid in a world ruled by buzzing wires and cold steel eyes watching his every move. He didn't have to feel the burn, that sharp bloom of pain in his brain, to know what was coming. He'd seen it firsthand.
No, it wasn't just what he'd felt; it was the fear he'd swallowed whole, like poison spreading through his blood. The stories he'd heard in whispers, late at night, stuck with him worse than anything he'd lived through. The screams that cut off suddenly, the smell of burning flesh so sharp it felt like he could taste it, the way bodies twitched like puppets jerked by a cruel hand flipping a switch.
He'd seen what came after, too, the skin not just burned but raw and weeping, and worse, the soul marked beneath the surface. Their eyes would go empty, like the light had flickered out, and their spirits shriveled up tight, like burnt paper folding in on itself. They moved like machines after that, jerky and scared, always waiting for the next shock. They weren't people anymore, just empty shells driven by fear, haunted by a burn that wasn't even there.
Igor pushed himself up from his narrow bed, the thin mattress doing little to ease the ache in his bones. His folded wings, tied tight against his back, felt heavy, a constant, clumsy weight reminding him of what he was and what he'd lost. He ran a rough, calloused hand over the coarse bindings, feeling the ghost of leathery membranes stretching, aching for the open air of the night.
He hadn't tried to fly in years, not since the mines, not since the cave-in. When the ceiling crashed down, burying everything in darkness and dust, it left more than broken stone and shattered bodies. It left a silence inside him. His wing was damaged, yes, membrane stretched too tight, bone bent out of shape, a dull ache always humming beneath it all. But pain no longer surprised him. It was just another reminder that he was still alive.
But the wing wasn't the real reason he stayed grounded. Even if it still worked, even if it could stretch out like it used to, strong and full of promise, it wouldn't change a thing. The collar was permanent. Locked into the metal plate clamped across his shoulders, it kept his body rigid during work, arms and wings folded tight, like a bird boxed up for the grave. Not that he tried to fight it anymore. Resistance was a luxury for those who still believed it mattered.
"Too much temptation," the overseers had said once, their laughter hollow and mechanical. But there had never been a chance. No flapping wings could lift him out of a pit dug deep into the earth's bones. No strength of will could undo what they'd done. The collar wasn't just a cage; it was the shutting of a door he didn't even know had been open.
He didn't dream of flying anymore. He barely even remembered what it felt like. It had become vague in his mind, a word that once meant something like freedom. Like escape. Like before.
Flight was a ghost.
And he was no longer haunted.
There was no sky down in the mines, just cold, unyielding stone pressing down like it had for centuries. Dampness clung to every surface, mixed with the sharp, sour smell of sweat soaked deep into the rock. The air was thick and heavy, carrying the iron bite of blood—some fresh, some long since absorbed into the walls. The tunnels twisted and tightened until he had to crawl, wings flattened against his back, useless and stifled like forgotten limbs no longer meant to move.
He had taught himself not to glance back, not to imagine the air catching under those wings. That kind of thinking was dangerous, a whisper in the dark leading him toward a door that wasn't there. They weren't wings anymore. Just empty shells. Dead, but still clinging on.
The soft, muted light filled his shared quarters, small but enough, bigger than a storage closet and sparsely furnished with only what was necessary. His crimson eyes adjusted quickly to the dimness. Night vision was one of the many so-called "gifts" that made Alucards useful as servants and workers. Along with it came the ability to sense even the faintest trace of toxic gas, a skill that had once made him essential in the coal mines.
The memory sent a chill through him: the damp, suffocating darkness; the constant threat of cave-ins; the acrid smell of firedamp hanging in the air, a quiet warning of invisible death. No matter what indignities he now endured, he would face them all before going back to that nightmare.
Igor still remembered how the dust stuck to his throat, thick and choking like 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 too-long bones and broad shoulders. The foreman didn't care about biology; wings were just another tool, like a pickaxe or a gas mask.
When the firedamp grew thick, it was always Igor who went first. His crimson eyes, prized for their sharpness, scanned for invisible threats while his knees scraped raw on the jagged stone. He had learned early on that the gas carried a smell, something sour and metallic like old pennies left out in the rain. Some Alucards didn't catch it in time. Their screams echoed long after.
There were others, too, boys younger than him, girls with hands shredded and wings raw and flaking. They whispered stories during shift changes when the foremen weren't paying attention. One girl swore she'd seen sunlight once, and said it made the veins in her wings glow gold. She carved lines into the rock, counting the days she'd lasted. Igor never asked how many marks she left unfinished.
When the collapse came, there was only silence before the tremor ran through his fingertips, the heavy pressure in the air, and then the ceiling tore down like paper. That day, he carried two children on his back, wings torn and useless. No medals. Just more shifts. More gas. More death. Some nights, he still woke to the smell of blood and coal, hands curled tight into fists, his collar pulsing as if it remembered too.
There wasn't a word for the kind of silence that settled after punishment shifts. Just the steady drip of groundwater and the quiet sobs of someone trying not to be heard. When Igor had spoken up once, only once, after a younger Alucard collapsed from heatstroke, they'd tied him to a hot pipe for twelve hours. The heat didn't burn his skin outright, but it felt like it was baking him from the inside out. His wings blistered at the joints, the membranes swelling and peeling like scorched fruit. Afterward, no one looked at him, not out of cruelty, but out of fear. The kind of fear that taught you to keep your head down and your voice even lower.
The worst were the nights they dragged them above ground for inspections, lined up like livestock under harsh 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 working, his posture obedient, and his voice neutral. The overseers didn't want 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 beneath years of soot and pain. But some lingered, like ghosts clinging to bone. In his quietest moments, Igor still mouthed those words, reminding himself he hadn't always been a machine.
He hadn't meant to slow down. Halfway through the haul, his knee seized, a sharp, burning pain that buckled his leg. But the cart still needed moving: twelve tons of compressed ore, and only four Alucards assigned to the job. When Igor stumbled, the overseer didn't yell. He just pulled a lever.
The collar lit his nerves on fire.
Igor collapsed, his face smashing into the jagged shale. Behind him, a distant shout echoed, someone calling "Number 8," but the words felt hollow, lost in the chaos. The world shrank to bursts of white-hot pain, the acrid scent of burnt leather, and the sharp copper tang of blood in his mouth. Through the haze, one thought sliced clear: if he died here, no one would even mark it. Just another broken tool, another weight discarded.
Later, lying in the infirmary with his wing crudely stitched in uneven knots, a stranger appeared. Dressed in a pale suit, with gloved hands clean and deliberate, one of the buyers. The supervisor muttered beside him, "He's high-yield. Good bones, sharp mind." The buyer crouched down, lifting Igor's chin like he was inspecting livestock. "We'll take him," he said flatly. "House of Lennox could use another perfect model."
That was how he left the mines, not with freedom, but exchanged one collar for another. Cleaner walls, softer commands, but the chain remained. It just gleamed a little brighter.
Igor's eyes caught the cracked mirror above the washbasin. Pale skin stretched tight over sharp bones, marked by the absence of sunlight. His deep-red hair, wavy and untamed, was one of the few things he controlled, always swept neatly to one side. Taller than most, lanky but hardened by years of toil, he carried the weight of labor in every line of his frame. His wings, broad and bat-like, were folded close against his back, the dark membrane so black it seemed to swallow the light around it.
From the shelf beside his bed, Igor's finger drifted over the worn spines of his hidden treasures, ancient vampire novels, their pages brittle with age and priced far beyond what most could afford at the bustling bazaar where he'd scavenged them. Dracula. The Hunger. 'Salem's Lot. Each book was a doorway to worlds that echoed his own in strange ways, familiar yet distant, offering escapes he dared only imagine. His current mistress had bought them for him, a rare act of generosity in a life otherwise defined by control and confinement.
Igor had always been drawn to the strange parallels between the vampires in those stories and his kind. The pale skin, the unusual eyes that seemed to glow in the dark, the link to bats, it all felt familiar. But the vampires in those tales could magically dispel their wings and change shape at will. Alucards were stuck in a permanent in-between, neither fully human nor whatever they had once been. And unlike the legends, they 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, no mating between humans and Alucards, wasn't just a law at the Lennox estate. It was a federal decree, cold and absolute, carved into the Servitude Code and enforced with ruthless finality: immediate execution, no trial, no mercy. The justification was always the same: preserve the purity of the human line, keep masters and servants forever divided, and prevent the "dilution" of what they called the human race.
When violations did occur in cities like Seattle, they were few but always public, savage displays broadcast across communal screens as warnings. Igor still saw the image burned into his mind: an Alucard on his knees in the dust, hands bound tight, eyes locked on a human woman weeping just beyond reach, her tears falling like salt on a wound that could never heal.
Igor slipped into his servant's uniform, a black buttoned shirt, white gloves, a red tie, and a charcoal gray suit, tailored with careful seams to accommodate his wings, and headed toward Mistress Maisie's chambers. Among the Lennox family, she was the only one who offered him a measure of respect. Still, he kept his guard up; he knew better than to confuse civility for true equality.
He knocked softly at her door.
"Enter," came the sleepy command from within.
Mistress Maisie sat before her vanity, chocolate-brown hair cascading in loose waves down her back. Even half-awake, her hazel eyes held a quiet intensity, a depth Igor had never seen in the other Lennoxes. At just twenty, she was five years younger than he, and she carried herself with a calm confidence that made her seem older than her years.
"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, torn between the strict rules forbidding personal talk and the unspoken expectation to respond. "In the end, Mistress, I believe the choice is yours. But… the red suits you better. It brings out the warmth in your hair."
A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she twirled a lock of hair between her fingers. "Why, thank you, Igor." She applied the red to her lips with practiced ease, then turned to him, eyes bright with expectation. "Don't I look gorgeous?"
Igor shifted uneasily, his eyes flicking away. "Mistress Lennox, I'm afraid I can't say that, I'm not permitted."
Her smile wavered for a moment. There was something in her eyes, disappointment, maybe, or frustration, but Igor couldn't tell. After all his years in their world, human emotions still felt like a puzzle he hadn't quite solved.
Maisie wore a flowing purple blouse that fell gracefully over her slender frame, paired with tailored black slacks that hinted at quiet confidence. Her hair was swept into a deliberately loose bun, strands escaping here and there to soften the edges of her face.
The yellow eyeshadow caught the light just right, drawing out the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, while her red lipstick stood bold against her fair skin, a splash of color that demanded attention.
The truth was, she was beautiful, undeniably so. But for an Alucard servant, that kind of thought was dangerous, a spark best smothered quickly beneath the weight of disciplined indifference. Igor buried it deep, where it couldn't take hold.
His future was already mapped out, as it was for all his kind. By thirty-five, he would be paired with a mate, chosen more for genetic compatibility and control than affection, expected to produce offspring to continue the cycle of servitude. But natural breeding was far from simple for Alucards; engineered in labs and born of synthetic means, many of them faced infertility or complications.
Prolonged fertility and delayed puberty were traits designed into them to maximize usefulness, but most new Alucards came not from natural union, but from carefully managed bioengineering. The breeding window stretched artificially from twenty-five to sixty, was less about chance and more about calculated production, another way the masters kept them as commodities rather than individuals.
The idea of being paired off, forced into a union meant only to churn out more servants, sickened him. When he reached thirty-five, they'd assign him a mate, another Alucard, a woman like himself, but the thought of sharing his life with anyone under those terms was unbearable.
He called it a breeding arrangement, nothing close to a real partnership. The weight of it twisted in his gut, a reminder that his future would be just like his past: long days of silence, obedience, and a routine that squeezed the life from him. No love. No choice. No way out.
He'd heard whispers from the older Alucards, the ones who'd long since abandoned any hope of freedom, calling a mate "a balm for the spirit." But to Igor, it was just another kind of cage, another way the system guaranteed the cycle kept turning. A cold tool for breeding more servants. He'd seen the hollowed eyes of those who'd surrendered, who'd let themselves go numb, and stopped asking questions. But Igor wasn't ready to join them. Not yet.
The whole practice sickened him, but there was no way around it. The Alucard population shrank year after year, not just because of their strange fertility cycles, but because the weight of the system crushed too many. Some died young from harsh conditions, others chose to end it themselves rather than live another day in chains.
And then there was Maisie. He watched her with a tension he couldn't name, suspended between the indoctrination of his upbringing and the quiet gravity of her kindness. She didn't truly see him, only the role he was meant to fill: a servant, a fixture in her world. But sometimes, in the space between commands, her gaze softened. Her words lost their polish.
In those rare moments, it felt like she sensed the distance between them, even if she couldn't name it. She didn't know what her kindness cost him. Every gentle tone, every unthinking touch, chipped away at the wall he'd built to survive. And beneath it, something dangerous stirred: the aching hope that his life might not be fixed in place forever.
"It's time for breakfast, Mistress," Igor said at last, his voice quiet but steady, a practiced formality slipping back into place. "Your family will be gathering shortly."
Maisie nodded, the hint of a sigh catching at the edge of her breath. Her reflection stared back at her from the vanity mirror, a composed mask settling over the girl beneath. "Very well," she said, the words soft with resignation, as though stepping back into a role she never chose.