My own personal definition is blood is required for nutrition at the exclusion of all else, coupled with an inability to withstand the sun. Everything else, from back home at last, has a little flexibility.

[After all, no one gives you a manual on how to be a vampire. You just learn as you go.

And in this moment, you also learn by shutting up. When Maria begins her explanation, a real explanation of circumstances, the dhampir's not sure what to make of it. There are things he recognizes of course, taking blood from an elder vampire and it coming with infection. The regeneration. But all the rest is--

--blood as a weapon?]

Much of that has elements I recognize but do not match especially with vampirism back home. But blood as a weapon is somewhat new, depending on what you well and truly mean by it.