• I don't know if you've ever seen a real life tiger up close and personal, but I have and let me tell you, they are capital b Big. I looked all around the dark room the big cat had chased me into, but one thousand pounds of stored flour in big burlap sacks lay between me and nearest way out. The moonlight casting down into the room through a high window to my right illuminated the monster of a animal in front of me. The tiger hunched down, great yellow teeth bared and I couldn't help but notice the sharpness of said teeth. I suddenly had a vision of myself, torn into two pieces and being munched on by the cat. Suppressing a shudder, I realized that if I wanted to get out of this adventure alive, I'd have to unleash the monster within me. As I lunged towards the tiger, I reflected on the crazy man who had put me in this position.

    Just hours earlier, before my life had been put in danger by the madman I'd just met, I had been preparing to go to the formal dinner in honor of my father, King of the Longview, Texas Court of the Vampires. I am a dhamphir, sire of a mortal mother and a vampire father. I had been raised by my adoptive mortal father, my mother having died when I was too young to remember her. When I became an adult, my real father introduced me into the world of the vampires, introducing to my status as the heir to his throne and my new identity as a dhamphir. He had shown me how to feed, should I feel so inclined, without actually harming any mortals. I remember him holding up a wine glass, filled with red liquid smelling of iron, a toast in my honor at the first one of these formal dinners, held just about every month, to celebrate something or other. My father never really had any good reason, he just made up an excuse to have one whenever he was in the mood for one.

    Anyway, he had been toasting me, his newfound heir and hope of the Court of Longview, Texas. The way the courts work is, each city has one, and the court basically serves as that city's chapter of vampires. Houston has a court, Chicago has one, New York City has one, etc., so basically, every city with a significant number of vamps living in or around it. And the toast my father had offered hinted at just how famous he thought I would become and congratulated me on embracing my vampire heritage. I'm serious. That's the way he put it. As if I were Jewish, and had just gotten my circumcision. When it came time to actually drink the flute of blood in front of me, I thought it might be akin to drinking tomato juice, which I had always hated, but when I let the crimson liquid touch my tongue, something in me just clicked together and it was as natural as if I had always been partaking of lifeblood.

    Oh, you're probably wondering how we get our drinks, aren't you? Well, rest assured, we don't hunt down one unlucky mortal and gobble up him or her. No, we have persuaded a great number of healthy teenagers to donate blood to our cause, regularly, and in return we offer favors to them. Mostly they just want their money, but a few of them actually hold on to their markers, hoping to cash them in someday. Anyway, we believe it to be safer than feeding on some unscreened STD carrier and one of us contracts AIDS as a result. None of us want that. But the man I met earlier in the night, the madman, was somehow related to my father, and once upon a time, he had been one of those donating teens, back in the Fifties, and he had accumulated a lot of favors. He had cashed them all in to be allowed to sit in at the dinner, and guess where he chose to sit? That's right, next to me.

    I found out why at the meal. While I sipped blood wine from a flute, he stared at me. I don't mean stared like intimidation stares, he stared like he was a Star Trek fan who somehow thought the whole series was some prophetic vision of the future or a gift from the future, sent back in time to warn us or something. A real weirdo, this one. He wouldn't tell me his name, either, just told me to call him Luc. Anyway, after the meal, which Luc did not partake of at all, he stood and made the announcement he'd called his markers in to make.

    "Gathered venerable vampires and dhamphirs, I have not come this night to offer insult to any of you. That said, I call into question the validity of your prince Archibald's right to the throne. If he really is the dhamphir he claims he is, he will be able to traverse the challenge I have taken the liberty to lay out. If he is, no harm, no foul, but if he is not who he claims to be, I demand that he must be removed and that a new heir must be found!"

    Needless to say, I had been outraged at the madman, but what little protest I could make as the unproven heir was blocked deftly by the enemies my father had made as king of the court. So, Luc's challenge had to be met, or else I risked being put to death for a kind of perjury, as per the bylaws laid down by our vampire forefathers. It was the code of conduct for millions of vampires worldwide and bucking it would do me no good. So, I found myself in the position of fighting off a tiger.

    My lunge had surprised the great cat, but tigers are not known for their clumsiness. He reacted quickly by shifting his weight to one side, glancing my body off of one shoulder. I wound up on my back, my head closest to the animal. I wasted no time rising to my feet again and debated trying to flee. It had the advantage of using my natural dhamphir speed, but it had not been tested against the tigers speed, and I did not like the chances of him being able to outrun me. On the other hand, I could try and break the tiger by wearing him out, but doing so might just wear me out and not the tiger. I didn't like my lack of options, here. I tried the desperate move. I bared my teeth in challenge at the cat, leaning my body towards him, showing him I was no weakling. I suppose he could have reacted worsely, but my lack of fangs probably didn't do anything to dissuade his attacks.

    You see, no vampire has fangs anymore. Nor do we burst in flames on contact with the sun. Our forefathers saw the need for change when Bram Stoker wrote Dracula. I mean c'mon, the guy basically put a stake in the hand of every reader and said, 'Go and get 'em!' We only survive as a race because we stopped taking in the lifeblood of mortals directly from their veins via sharp canines. Over time, the fangs shrank from disuse, until eventually they disappeared altogether. When we stopped taking in such great amounts of iron from the blood of mortals, it had the fortunate side effect of clearing up our skin, removing the unnatural iron in a vampire's body from the skin cells, which were the reason the rays of the sun burned us so. Gradually, vampire skin became the healthy tan color favored by today's society. You didn't think the whole skinny and tan thing was Hollywood's creation, did you? You bet your bread and butter they didn't, we had it first. Nowadays, the blood wine we drink has been processed to remove most of the toxic iron in mortal blood, so that we can enjoy the sun as much as you guys do. Cool, huh?

    Anyway, as I was saying, the tiger didn't exactly back down like I thought he would, but he wasn't tearing my throat out either. A sick voice at the back of my mind whispered "Give the animal time." You talk about a case of the willies, man. I kept at it, showing the tiger my fierce side, and added in a bestial growl from my predator instincts. I couldn't believe what happened next. The tiger actually lay down! He just sort of sat down on his haunches, and then lowered himself on his front paws until he lay down just as a domestic cat would. He was so cute that I actually had to rebuke a part of me that wanted to scratch his chin. Some things you just don't do to tempt fate. She's a cruel mistress and she never resists a straight line. I eased off the intimidation routine and just sort of stood up straight, staring down at the cat. He made no move toward me. "Hm," I said aloud. "You don't seem so mean now, do you?" He rolled over, showing me his belly in reply. Now there's something you don't see every day. With caution, I strode over close enough to rub his belly, and he watched me until I made contact with a gentle scratch, when he let his head fall back, and I swear to Heaven, the tiger actually purred.

    I smiled. "Maybe we could start over, huh, cat? Hi, I'm Archie." I heard a kind of a gentle growl, maybe a sound of affirmation. I could just hear it in my head. "Nice to meet you, I'm Sher Kahn." The thought made me laugh and the tiger sat up and took notice of that. He wasn't looking at me, though. I followed his eyes and turned to meet the eyes of Luc himself. Okay, so maybe he wasn't a crazy man with a warehouse of jungle animals, but I still didn't like him.

    "He must like you," Luc offered, now seeming much less threatening. As a matter of fact, now that I noticed it, I suppose he had been a gentle soul the whole time and I had simply twisted him into this grotesque figure of a person. "He has only ever allowed me a brief scratch of his belly."

    I looked around the place and felt kind of sheepish. "So...did I pass whatever dhamphir challenge I was supposed to?"

    "Yes, actually," Luc said, his blue eyes seeming very much at ease. "You have tamed the animal in question."

    "Say what?" I asked, glancing between the tiger to the man before me several times. "I did what?"

    "The vampire nature is not to fight, but to find more peaceful means of conflict resolution. In this case, you used your natural predatory instincts to establish a connection with the animal," he explained, his arms spread open at his sides. "You have demanded his respect and he has offered it to you. He will now follow you wherever you go. You have passed, young prince. Take him as your prize and go." The man in blue robes turned to leave and I found my voice just in time.

    "Prize?" I asked his back, looking to the animal. "You belong to me, now?" The tiger rose to his paws and lazily bumped his head against my knee. I shrugged. Weirder things had happened in my life, and besides, I'd always wanted an exotic pet. I turned to follow Luc out the door, and found my own way back to my father's mansion, the tiger in tow.

    ***

    I sat in my room later that night, the tiger with me upon my king-sized bed, when a knock came from my bedroom door.

    "Enter," I called. I had been expecting the butler with a pizza that I had called out for. Instead, my father stood at the door. I waited for him to say something, whatever had brought him here to my room, but he stood silently there, watching me toss a ball up at the ceiling and the tiger watching me. "Well?" I offered, catching the ball and looking over at him. "What is it, dad?"

    My father smiled quietly. "I take it you passed," he said, amused.

    "Oh, that. Yeah, Luc said I had 'tamed' the animal here," I said, motioning to the tiger, who was now trying to chew the ball away from me. "And that he would follow me anywhere." Suddenly, something dawned on me. "It was an intiation, wasn't it?" I asked.

    My father nodded without saying anything. "It was two things. It was a preemptive strike against any who might raise an argument down the road about your legitimacy as the heir to my rulership of this court, from a king to his prince. And it was a test, meant to teach you about yourself, from a father to his son."

    "And Luc?"

    "A friend who agreed to do me a favor."

    I smiled. "So, I'm really supposed to take care of this big lug?" I rustled the fur on top of the tiger's head, who by now had possession of the ball and was gnawing on it.

    "That depends, are you going to give him a name or just call him the big lug?" my father asked playfully.

    "I was thinking about Sher Kahn, or just Sher, for short. What do you think?" I looked over at my biological father, the vampire who taught me what it is to be a dhamphir, my king. My Dad.

    He smiled again in reply. "It fits," he said.