Vampbears
Description: imagine a koala with grey or white fur, red eyes, and delicate fangs. Increase its size to about two feet and have it walk upright. Vampbears can be trained to don and wear boots, hats, and coats (to protect them from harmful UV rays); their front paws are somewhat clumsy at tasks, but serviceable.
They’re small! They’re cute! They’re cuddly! They’re supernatural bloodsuckers! I guess that there’s always a catch, huh?
Here’s the thing about vampbears, though: they’re domesticable supernatural bloodsuckers — yes, that was a surprise to everybody, when the first ones started popping out of all those randomly appearing dimensional Hellgates. Vampbears are more or less like foxes or badgers on the other side of those Hellgates; but over here they proved remarkably easy to tame and breed. Forty years of doing so have removed a lot of the vampbear’s more problematic behaviors, to the point now where they’re safe to be around children, babies, and even cats and dogs.
Just how smart a vampbear is remains open to question. They’re definitely more intelligent than dogs, and can repeat a phrase or two that they’ve picked up from their owners. All vampbears learn very quickly to put on protective clothing to block the sun’s rays. But whether they’re sapient or not is a different story. It’s hard to autopsy a creature that turns to dust when it dies, and you should never try to vivisect a vampire, domesticated or not. Never.
And that’s the problem, right there. Vampbears are vampires. They seem to be vampires that don’t suffer from holy symbols or consecrated ground (unlike some of the monsters that still pop out of those aforementioned Hellgates); but, they can’t cross running water, don’t reflect in mirror, are remarkably vulnerable to wooden stakes and garlic, and of course can pass on their infectious state to other bear-like creatures. This unfortunately, very much includes the common raccoon — and vampire raccoons are definitely not domesticable. Quite the contrary, really. Which is another reason why people keep vampbears.
Do they leave all vegetation around them drained of color with two small puncture marks? Shades of one my favorite children’s series: Bunnicula!