"They don't understand," he muttered to himself. "They're on the top of the world. They think it's enough just to be a vampire. They don't know what it's like, being the least, the worst, the weakest." He dug himself a little bit deeper into his hole, aware of the nearness of dawn. "They don't know."

He whined to the empty air because he couldn't whine to the others. He was weak enough without appearing weaker still by complaining of it. His fingers scraped absently at the dirt and rock and concrete chunks that made up the hillside as he repeated his litany of woes. Then suddenly his hand broke through into a pocket of open space. A swirl of cold air against his skin told him that there was more behind him than just an animal burrow. The gentle air current spoke of space. Lots and lots of space. The entire hillside might well be hollow. He stopped whining and turned to opening the hole wider. He wasn't given to flights of fancy, and so he had no thoughts for what wonders might lie beyond. He would find them when he'd dug out enough space to enter. Thus with an unthinking scrabble of fingers against earth he crawled forward into his destiny.