I had a dream.

And it was good. One of those nice, long, there's-a-plot-and-character-development types.

It was sort of modern fantasy. Basically, I was a Mage who worked at the morgue because there was something wrong with all my magic, and all my healing spells would only work on the dead, so my job was to "fix" people. I couldn't bring them back to life but I could repair skin and bone, making people look like they'd never been in car accidents and the like.

It was really a pretty good job choice for me, considering. And my older sister was the High Mage in our city (no name), and all the other people in the family were very powerful, so I wasn't quite a black sheep, but they couldn't understand why I couldn't just do my magic right and get a cushy job like them.

So, I'm just going about my life, doing my job and one night I go to a K-Mart, and out in the parking lot I notice this man running, and he's running towards me, but all the way from the other side of the huge parking lot, so I don't feel in danger yet so I head towards the store. I glance back, just for safety and he's really closing the distance, and I get a little wary feeling and move faster. And he's still moving a hell of a lot faster than me. I get into the store and he slows down to normal speeds, but he's still following me, and I walk back to the bathrooms, thinking to hide there.

(Some part of me not in the dream didn't applaud that idea when it happened. Great, you're probably going to be alone in the bathrooms with no way out, but I wasn't really thinking like that in the dream, so I went in)

And of course he followed me in, and my useless-for-anything-but-fixing-the-dead-magic told me this guy wasn't alive. A vampire.

There was a moment of cowering and then he grabbed me by the throat and gently drew his finger down my cheek, cutting it with one nail as he leaned in to feed, and this other guy came into the bathroom, and the vampire froze.

At first the second guy (looked sort of like a cross between Methos (Highlander) and Captain Jack Harkness (Torchwood)) acted like he'd come in on accident, and that he didn't understand what was going on, which made the vampire let me go, in hopes of subduing the guy as well.

At which point the guy moped the bathroom with the vampire. Which was pretty dang sweet from my perspective, cowering on the floor by the sinks. The only problem is that vampires are really hard to kill, and in the end the vampire was broken on the floor but he wasn't really going to die (it takes more than stakes to kill them), and he was just lying there watching to two of us.

The guy came over to see if I was ok, and I said I was and he noticed the vampire watching us, and he couldn't keep his eyes from the cut on my cheek. At which point I realized he was a vampire too. He traced the cut with his fingers and it stopped bleeding, with hardly a trace of magic (only really, really powerful vampires can do magic) and then he made sure the other vampire was watching as he bit me.

Which didn't hurt. It was like one of those romance novel cover vampire bites.

Then he got me out of the K-Mart and back to my car, telling me to get out of there. Odds are the vampire in the bathroom wouldn't think to keep looking for me because they'd assume the older vampire had taken me away for the kill.

I got in the car and drove home.

And...Er, I can't really remember what led to the next part. Somehow there was a vampire near my apartment or work, and I panicked. I had to find the vampire who'd protected me before, and there was something he'd said either at the car or in the bathroom about 'cleaning up his new neighborhood' that gave me a clue as to where he lived. So I went looking, you know, at night, walking the streets, all kinds of unsafe and he found me first.

He told me that since I was such a powerful mage I should be able to defend myself from the dead, and I explained to him how my magic worked (the whole conversation took place in a empty, moon-lit park, on the swings (we were just sitting on them) but how's that for atmosphere?) and that I couldn't actually do any normal magic. He got intrigued and ran his hand down the rusted edge of the swing set, getting the sharp rust to scratch his palm, and asked me if I could heal it. (Mages aren't supposed to be able to heal the dead, or the undead for that matter. Go me.) I healed it, he was suitably impressed and made a joking comment about needing to have someone like that in his court (which gave me a clue as to how old he was- vampires hadn't had courts in a very long time. Or rather, they did, it was just a large city-wide thing, for all vampires, not just one created by a really powerful vampire).

He offered me a deal in the end. He'd only just come to the city and was planning on staying a while despite the riff-raff that ran loose. He'd be cleaning them up, as it were, like at the K-Mart, but he needed to also do away with the Court in the area and all the powerful vampires in it, since they simply allowed this sort of behaviour and they were obviously unfit to rule. Odds are he wouldn't win all the fights and he'd need someone for during the day and to have someone to heal him would be a great benefit, and having a human working willingly under him would be an example of his power and help earn trust, for getting into those hard to get into Court buildings. In return he'd protect me from the other vampires, and make sure they stayed away from my work and apartment and me.

I accepted the deal, and time kind of lept forward a few weeks or months. We were bluffing our way into a Court sponsored Ball, and some of my High Mage family were in there hobnobbing, which I hadn't known about. My sister came over with her date (oh god, the Vampire leader of the city) and made a few snide comments about my being dateless and how did I get in anyway. At which point Jasper (the vampire finally got a name in this part) showed up, and my sister boggled. The Vampire Leader didn't think anything of Jasper, since he was using some kind of vampire magic to pretend to be mortal, and the party continued as usual, except during the dancing my sister kept staring over her date's shoulder at Jasper. As the night wore on more and more of the humans went home, including my family, while Jasper and I stayed (dangerous for mortals, because once the humans get few enough in the room a bloodbath might occur). Once it got to the dangerous part and we were the only humans left the vampires lowered the lights, closing in on us.

Jasper stopped his magic, at which they all recoiled, and a few bolted for the door, but didn't make it. Jasper had his bloodbath, which took out about half of the powerful vampires in the city and just at the last second one of them pulled out a weapon and shot me.

It was pretty bad. Blood everywhere. Jasper tore the last vampire apart, which I didn't see, and then came over to where I was slumped on the floor, pressing my hand to the wound. He picked me up, and I was already starting to get tunnel vision- I didn't remember how we got back to his house, which on the inside looked like a Mesopotamian Temple (that's where Jasper was from, apparently) at which point Jasper did some really powerful vampire magic and saved my life, but left himself very weak (thus the need to retreat to his house where he'd be safe, before doing it). I took care of him for a few days until he was better, and by then the whole city was in an outrage about the slaughter at the ball and even my family was up in arms because they thought I'd been killed.

I went to tell them I was ok, at which point the remaining powerful vampires stormed in and "escorted" me back to their last stronghold, determined to have the information out of me as to what happened. Jasper showed up, there was another bloodbath, and I kept healing him, and just as the battle was over we both looked up at each other and our eyes met and-

My alarm went off. There was some story about the Midwest and the flooding and some guy trying to clean his house with a mop and bleach.