Author's Notes:

I was thinking of adding this in as a bonus chapter once I finished the rewrite, but I'm too impatient and I've kept you all waiting for way too long with this (still on going) rewrite. So here's something. Alternate title: Ruby

The whole scene was a blur to her now. She remembered being spotted by somepony, their scream echoing out into the night, and the sound of hooves and wings above her. It was the chase afterwards that still eluded her. Despite enhanced senses on all fronts it was still a jumbled mess of running, prying off her dress to free her wings, looking for any opening to hide or take flight, but they were always above her. Disadvantaged, and hungry, the chase was shorter than it could have been. Had she gotten her meal before the pedestrian had screamed she could have overtaken them, but she was weak from hunger.

There was no trial for her, no one to hear her story. Nor would they care if she could tell them. She was dragged before the princesses, smirking softly at the idea of Celestia herself having to be woken up just for the likes of her. The two alicorns handled her roughly with their magic, inspecting her wings, teeth, and eyes before holding her in place.

“All of the signs are there, sister,” Luna said, not bothering to hide her tone from their captive.

“Yes,” Celestia said shortly with a nod, “How long has it been since the last one?”

“The records you have kept say nearly one hundred years.”

Celestia pondered for a moment on that. “And there was a much smaller time period before that.” The white alicorn turned to her prisoner. “Have we finally come close to exterminating your line, or have you simply gotten better at hiding?”

She said nothing in response, but Celestia didn't need words. The beast's red eyes filling with silent tears said enough. The guard was winning, the monsters were losing. She turned away from the still held creature and back to her sister.

“They were your mess, and now that you're back I expect you to handle their sentencing,” Celestia said this with a hard, definitive tone.

Luna merely nodded and aimed her magic at the captive, who closed her eyes and waited. She'd felt death before, the cold calm touch of the reaper. She wasn't afraid, hadn't felt that in a hundreds of years. This was simply the fate of her kind for siding with Nightmare Moon. As if they'd had a choice being creatures of the dark. Creatures of death and blood. This was the fate of all vamponies, sooner or later.

There was a tingling sensation in her stomach that grew into an ache, and finally pain. Her last act was a howl of agony, her wings finally unfurling fully in their bat-like glory, as her whole body was set ablaze from the inside out. The bright white marble of the audience chamber reflecting the light off the candles stung her eyes, as the last thing she focused on was the sweet, safe night outside the windows beyond the throne.

The next thing she knew warm air filled her lungs, along with a barrage of unfamiliar and familiar scents. She spluttered for a moment, then rocked back and forth on her hooves. Recovering, she looked around the darkness, vaguely making out a large bed to her left and a wall to her right. She should be worried, she thought, but she also should be dead. A dozen questions or more pierced her brain, but only one thing resounded into her body, sleep. With hardly a thought more she collapsed on the bed, shaking lightly with pain, and found herself once more lost in blackness.

The panic he'd had subsided after several minutes of staring and probing, yet it also returned with each new discovery. She was a pony, a My Little Pony sort of pony. Having been part of the internet phenomenon known as bronies back in the day that was an easily made observation. The fact that she was physically there, laying unconscious on his bed however, was harder to cope with. When that fact sunk in he started looking her over. He found her breathing, her light gray chest rising and falling with breath, but she had no pulse. This rose more panic than before up until he saw her fangs. Sharp, pointed, and lightly sticking out of her mouth. After that he stepped back and reexamined the sleeping mare.

She was around three feet long, give or take, and was about two and a half feet from hoof to head, again give or take. She had a light gray coat, and a sort of off pink mane, a pink that was several shades closer to gray. Her cutie mark seemed to be some sort of thick bracelet or bangle, and she had bat wings. Of course the bat wings might have been a giveaway if he was familiar with pony mythos, but considering he was just a human and talking pastel equines weren't real in his world he gave himself a pass.

Stepping quietly out of the room after several minutes, the human moved across his spacious apartment and into the kitchen. It was nearing nightfall, as he could see outside from a pair of large French doors that led to the roof of his building, and he silently wondered how long she'd been here. He'd left early that morning, only arriving home late due to a bus malfunction, so she could have been there all day or only a few hours.

Popping a few aspirin and downing a large glass of water, the human rubbed his temples and half moaned, “What have you gotten into now, Pete Powell?”

Pete's rhetorical question was answered a half hour later when the mare stepped out of his room, obviously weak and dazed. She looked around, notably outside, and gave a sigh of relief. Glad that it was night and she had no fear of the sun, the mare began looking around. That was until she laid eyes on the owner of the home.

“Well, now. How long have you been unconscious?” Pete asked the mare, slightly concerned.

The gray mare stepped backwards in shock and stared. For the first time in two hundred years she was afraid. She had no idea what this creature was, or where it would hail from. She knew it was bigger than her by almost half over, and in her state of hunger it would certainly be more powerful. She thought about running out the doors behind her, flying off into the night, but that was quickly dismissed. With no clue where she was and starvation setting in she wouldn't get far. Where ever Luna had sent her it was possibly a fate worse than death.

The bipedal creature stepped forward, and the mare held her ground despite her fear. She conceded being at this things' mercy. It knelt down in front of her, making them eye level, and looked her over. It was at this moment that the familiar scent she'd picked up earlier registered, testosterone. This was a male. After a moment it reached out with it's … whatever it had instead of forelegs and hooves, and gently ran it down the back of her neck.

“Warm,” he muttered to himself.

Finally, she worked up the nerves to speak. “What do you want?” She tried to sound strong, but it came out almost as a whimper.

A dozen thoughts rushed through Pete's mind, some of them rather dark, some of those sexual, but he banished them and looked the mare in her bright red eyes. “I want to help.”

The mare watched his eyes in return, she saw something flash in them, a hunger, but then it faded and she could see his sincerity. That, most of all, scared her. Either he didn't know what she was, or what she was didn't frighten him. If it was the second one then he really was something to fear, if it was the first … then where was she? Those thoughts were pushed suddenly aside though as she became highly aware of her fangs, a tingling pain filling them. A familiar pain.

“What's your name?” The creature asked.

“R-Ruby,” the mare stuttered, feeling her slitted eyes contract and zoned in on the neck of the being in front of her.

“Ruby,” the man repeated, casually following her gaze. “Tell me, what happens when you bite someone?”

This snapped Ruby out of her daze. “W-what? N-nothing! Why?”

Carefully, Pete reached out and touched one of Ruby's exposed fangs. “Hard to miss the blood sucking appendage.”

The mare blushed and gently bit her lip. “Guess the secret is out...”

Pete chuckled, “Not much of a secret with it staring me in the face like that. Why don't you tell me what happened, and I'll see if we can't work something out.”

“What happened?”

“Yeah, how you got here,” Pete said, stepping back and sitting on his couch.

Ruby followed cautiously and began her explanation. She talked about how she'd picked a hapless victim for the evening after working her way into a fancy Canterlot party, how she'd been spotted when her hunger over powered her common sense and she tried to snack on a neck in the streets, the chase, and Luna's supposed sentencing. All the while Pete was paying attention to every minor detail, notably was that Ruby had only failed to escape because she was hungry. It didn't take a genius to figure out what a vampire meant by hungry, or to assume that the princesses didn't give her a 'last meal.' Leading into the natural, and correct, assumption that she was still severely weak.

“So let me get this straight,” he said, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes, “You've been abandoned in an alternate universe, with no idea how you're going to survive, or if the blood of people can sustain you, and you think Luna did this on purpose?”

“Alternate universe?”

Pete nodded, “Yeah. At least that's the only option I can think of, considering there's no talking ponies here. At least not for real. There's a cartoon, but...”

Figuring it would be better to show than tell, Pete picked up his remote and turned on the TV. Ruby jumped at first, but then settled in and watched as a news program went on. It highlighted various things, but the one thing she noticed was that every creature was mostly the same. All these tall, nearly hairless primates. Humans this one had called them.

After a little bit, Pete turned the TV back off and sighed. “Welcome to Earth, Ruby. My name is Pete Powell, and I guess I'll be taking care of you.”

Ruby blinked, “Taking care of me?”

“Well, I'm not just going to let you leave and send half the world into insanity because of a talking pony, and you're hardly in any position to take care of yourself.”

“I'm a vampony!” Ruby shouted indignantly. “We were the harbingers of Nightmare Moon's army! Bringers of death, darkness, destruction!”

Pete smiled widely, slipped off the couch, wrapped an arm around the protesting mare's neck, and snuggled against her. “You? You're fluffy and adorable.”

Ruby could feel her fangs lengthen, hungry. She could see his neck, the human's shirt neck pulled down that much due to his arm being wrapped around her. She could smell his gender, his scent, his blood. Along with that she was angry, she hadn't been seen as weak and vulnerable in hundreds of years, and she was going to show this human why. In a single motion, a single moment, she leaned forward, her cat's eye pupils dilating with anger, and sunk her fangs into his neck.

Pete gave a low hiss, and flinched slightly, but he didn't move. Honestly, he was afraid of what pulling away with something rammed into his neck could do to his veins and arteries. Ruby, however, went wide eyed as she drank. His blood was delicious, some what of a rare thing as blood flavor was like wine to vamponies, any would get you drunk but few were truly magnificent. On top of that she saw his immobility as many things, acceptance, bravery, compassion, things she hadn't experienced since she'd been pulled into the night.

She slowly removed her fangs and, on a strange instinct she didn't understand at the moment, licked the gently leaking wounds she'd made. The feeling of her tongue on his neck made Pete shiver. The two slowly pulled apart, Pete with a light smile on his face, Ruby concerned.

“Are you … stupid?” Ruby asked, looking Pete straight in the eyes.

“Maybe I am,” Pete chuckled, “But I told you, I want to help. I … guess that means keeping you fed too.” He looked around worried a bit, then back. “Um, is this a nightly thing we'll have to do?”

Ruby thought for a moment, she could say that, suck him dry in a few days and be stronger than she'd been in years. But she wouldn't gain much from that, in fact she'd be worse off. She would be alone in a world she didn't understand and couldn't live properly in. She'd been given a second chance, the second chance she'd wanted since the attack in the alley way in Canterlot two hundred years ago. She couldn't be normal in this world, but she couldn't be normal in her own world either. Here though she could live without fear.

“No, once every few days will be fine. I won't need super strength any time soon, I don't think, so I won't need a large amount of blood at once.”

Pete nodded, “Alright. Just, uh, warn me next time?”

“Yeah, I … Sure, I can do that,” Ruby blushed at having lost herself twice in such a short time.

Suddenly Pete recoiled slightly, realizing his arm was still around her. “Oh! Uh, sorry. I forgot that-”

Ruby lightly pressed up against him, though she only came up to about his shoulder. “It's okay. I don't mind.”

Pete blushed hard and slowly put his arm back around the mare, who leaned against him more and yawned lightly. She wasn't as at his mercy as she expected Pete thought. She was lost in a world she didn't understand with no way back, and honestly no desire to return, true. She still knew things about men though, she could keep him compliant with her. It was hardly any different than what she did back in Equestria. This was just a long term meal, one that was willing and happy to provide, like a catering service. All Ruby had to do was keep Pete satisfied, and she was good at that.