She located a trog cavern, from which the first leathery inhabitants were even then emerging into the gloom, and took one on the spot. He was only a trog, but blood is blood. And from the moment of the piercing, when her freshly lengthened, keenly serrated eye-teeth bit into his neck and found the spurting jugular, Wratha knew the meaning of that immemorial Wamphyri phrase, 'the blood is the life!'

The trogs made no protest as she drained the life of one of theirs. She was a vampire, thrall and servant of the Wamphyri. What could they do? Only interfere and the rest of the monsters would fall on them with all their might, like an avalanche out of the crags. Anyway, they rarely suffered in this fashion, for the human leeches of Turgosheim were far more fond of the sweet flesh of Sunsiders. It must be hoped that this attack was the exception to the rule. And as Wratha moved on, they dragged the drained corpse of her victim into their cave and burned it, for even trogs had come to know the nature of vampires ...

Strengthened, Wratha made for Turgosheim, for the passes leading to Sunside. It was sundown and the Wamphyri were awake in their manses and abroad on their flyers. But she knew that their warrior creatures were confined in their pens under the crags and spires, which gave her heart. And keeping always to the deepest shadows, eventually Wratha approached a pass.

Here the ground rose sharply, from the bed of the vast gorge which housed Turgosheim to the mouth of the pass, and there was no cover to mention. She couldn't risk it, not with the high beacons flaring red and orange, and lights burning in all the manses, and flyers overhead where aerial patrols came and went through the pass. Time to rest, and move on in the hour before sunup. Which she did, finding shelter under a shelf of rock away from the trail through the pass ...

... The hissing and roaring of hungry warriors brought her awake. They had been let loose from their pens into the gorge where they roamed at will. When two came together they would challenge and rear up but not strike; their Wamphyri masters had lodged commands in their small brains, forbidding fighting among themselves; they were, quite simply, watchdogs. And they were not watching for other warriors.

For centuries ago, when the tithe system was first established, a party of Sunsiders had come through the mountains at high sunup to seek out and kill the Wamphyri in their manses. And they had actually achieved some small measure of success - the deaths of several lieutenants and thralls, the capture of a lesser spire, the murder of its Lord and master - before the surprised habitants of Turgosheim had put them down. Since when, this daily release of monsters into the gorge had become a matter of habit, passed down all the years between.

Emerging from shelter, Wratha spied the loathsome grey-blue bulk of a warrior moving in the darkness close by! She fled with all speed for the pass; scenting her, the creature roared and snorted all the more and followed after; she might have made it ... but another warrior was waiting in the mouth of the pass itself!

Wratha was trapped between them. They came upon her mewling, and glaring murderously with their crimson, night-seeing eyes. She could flee no more, and so simply stood and waited. At least they would make a quick end of it. But snuffling and snorting, and issuing their vile stenches, the warriors came no closer. They had her full scent now and knew that she was vampire stuff no less than they themselves. And Wratha moved between them into the pass ...

Sunup came and Wratha proceeded south, but in the deep, twining ravine which was the pass she felt nothing of the sun, merely spied its light spreading through the sky overhead like a pale stain. And all the long day she marched the route of the tithelings and kept her burgeoning vampire senses alert for any strange or inimical thing. So she came to the descending slopes of Sun-side, where rather than brave the furnace sun she rested in the opening of the ravine till sundown. And in the twilight she bathed in a tumbling stream, then made her way through the long night down to the place where her tribe had built a small town on the Wamphyri tithe-route within the border of its territories.

Avoiding the watch, she moved silent as a wraith to the leader's house of woven withes and skins, where she found him home and abed. His wife was many years dead; he lived on his own and in a slovenly fashion; his loud snoring caused Wratha to smile, for she knew that this was his last sleep. But her smile was awful in the night, having nothing of warmth in it and even less of humanity. And standing naked in the shadows of his room, she called his name but softly.

He grunted and came starting awake, demanding: 'Who is it?'

'Wratha!' she answered, moving into the moonlight where it flooded through his window, but keeping her feral eyes hidden for the moment.

'You!' he gasped, seeing her outline, and that she was naked. And, coming more nearly awake: 'But... you?'

'I escaped!' she told him in a low whisper. The Wamphyri think I'm dead. Tonight I must rest, and before sunup go off into the forest like a wild thing to hide there all my days.' She intended no such thing.

He sat up straighter in his bed. 'You ... you dared come back here? Why, you'll bring them down on us like-'

'Only for the night, as I've said,' she answered, cutting him off. 'And anyway, they don't even know I'm alive ... you poor blind fool!'

'What?' He sat there astonished as she moved closer to his bed. 'Me, blind? What are you saying?'

'You who would give me to his son, when all that I really wanted ... was you!' It was a ploy: words to immobilize him, keep him from exclaiming too loudly. She lifted his blanket, stole beneath it, pressed herself against him. She was a vampire, strange and sensual. He felt her body's weird heat, which was cold at the same time, and grew dizzy from her fascination.

'But... I was old,' he stuttered. 'And you...'

'You were the leader!' she answered, her stroking bringing him burning alive, jerking like a hooked fish in her hand. And in a moment:

'Let me ... let me feel you,' he husked, with his coarse hands on her body. She allowed it - until he bent his head to kiss her breasts. And then she saw the throb of his neck where her caresses had caused the blood to course like a river, and he heard the hisss of her breath as her hand slid from his member to the seed-swollen source of his lust. Then, as she tightened her grip with a vampire's strength, and as her nails dug in, he tried to draw away... too late!

He saw her eyes yellow as molten gold in the night, saw the moonlight gleaming white on her mouth of knives, hich she closed on his windpipe to sever it. Perhaps, in the instant of her striking, he issued the small scream of a gelding, cut off along with his air and, less rapidly, his life ...

... And perhaps, in the smaller house alongside his own, his son Javez heard or in some way sensed his father's small scream. At any rate he woke up, and listened awhile to the silence, then came padding to investigate.

Wratha, a child of the night, saw Javez in all detail; he saw only shadows and moonbeams in his father's room, and a humped outline moving under the blanket. But he also heard the sounds of Wratha's hungry suction. It sounded like something else: like his father was with a woman! Which he was, but not in the way Javez thought it. The younger man's jaw fell open as he began to back out of the room.

Wratha stuck her head further out, tossed back her hair, and in a 'shocked' voice said, 'Oh! - Javez!' Which spoke volumes, however falsely.

He knew that voice at once, and his eyes started from his head as he whispered, 'Wratha?' Then, jaw lolling more yet, he choked: 'Father.1' And blood surging, he leaped to the bed and tore aside the blanket. What had been his father lay there ...