He stops. "You were dead."

Were? Already?

"I'm not," she says, a little defensively.

He flinches back, then forward suddenly. His arms moving. "Drank you whole, neck ripped and nearly off. Dead." Like the others.

Her shoulders go up, her chin down, almost without her realizing it.

Maybe you did it wrong, she doesn't say, because the one thing she knows at this point is that she doesn't want him to make another attempt at it.

"Uh-huh," she says instead, uncertainly.

"You were human. Tasted human. Not human? Vampire. No. Yet? S'all confused and he was - you bit me," he says, at last, suddenly realising. "Had my blood. That's how it works. Vampire blood and when you die you come back."

So she did fight back. There's an odd sort of relief to that realization, the idea that she didn't go down easy and that this... had some effect, at least.

"Why shouldn't I bite someone trying to kill me?"

"...this happens."

It's not like she could have known, but she doesn't really want to say that. It's his fault for making assumptions. She's small, looks like easy prey. Nothing to indicate she's not averse to using her teeth. He must have been surprised.

Regardless, she's clearly outmatched. She doesn't know where she is, or who this is in front of her. She botched her only clear option for escape. He's not trying to kill her (anymore? again?) and she's not inclined to play nice with someone who's already admitted to attacking her.

Don't surrender. Don't die.

Mutually incompatible options, now, and one of them might be off the table entirely. She's going to have to figure out her own primary goals from here, and like it or not, it seems the only potential resource she has at the moment is her would-be murderer. If he attacks again, she'll fight again. But for the moment...

"What happens now?"