He lifted up the slab, to find a dark stairwell beneath it. He nodded and descended, lowering the slab back down behind him. Ahead there was a light. It flickered, probably candlelight. The stairs turned a corner, doubling back on themselves, and he could see into the room.

It was an open concrete cube, not entirely unlike the room in the cabin where he slept, just a little larger. It was lit only by a half dozen candles, stuck to the floor by their own wax. There were seven vampires in it, males and females both. None of them seemed particularly weak-minded. Some stood, some lounged on the floor. There was a subtle tension in the room, each one asserting him or herself, trying to establish dominance and position. But most of the tension now was focused on him, and he could feel several of them reaching out to test his strength, see where he would stand in the pecking order.

But his attention was already moving beyond them, past the pale and largely dark-clad forms of the vampires to a shape that huddled against the far wall. A shape that shivered and whimpered brokenly. A shape that had once been human.

David stood at the foot of the stairs for a moment, feeling something boiling up inside of him. All his life he'd heard the stories of what vampires did. All his life he'd been told to hate them. And he had. And hated them all the more when he saw them catching humans on the road, treating them like objects, like animals, like toys. But this was infinitely worse. They had played with this man, this human being full of hopes and dreams and possibilities, until they had broken him, and they would undoubtedly try to keep him alive as long as possible, to prolong their feeding and prolong their game, just because they thought it was fun, destroying a person merely for their own amusement, and actually seeing it with his own eyes drove him over the edge.

He had come down intending only to look, not to fight, but as his anger boiled over into pure fury, he drew his sword and leaped forward in a blur of motion.

It was so fast, and his sudden anger had given the watching vampires so little warning that he beheaded one of them before any of them even realized what was going on. But six was still plenty, and though unarmed they moved in around him, confident that they, six to one, could take him down.

He snarled at them, spinning and ducking, not trying to anticipate and block their blows, but just weaving a net of steel and flying black cloak, attacking them all in turn, nearly all at once. There was no thought or strategy, no pattern of pause and strike, just the reflexes of his long months of practice and training, moving at the fastest speed his muscles could provide, automatically, on pure muscle memory. His mind was busy with other things, for with his physical assault he launched a mental assault as well. Not pushing and striving for control, he instead beat on them with pure rage. He bewildered them, overwhelmed them, and his whirling cape and slashing blade, motions nearly too fast for the eye, human or vampire, to follow, made him seem like something not just inhuman, but superhuman, unstoppable.

He was not, of course. Some of their blows hit home, and he would be bruised and bloody when he slowed down enough to notice. But the attacks didn't even register. Defense wasn't an option, further attack was all he wanted, and the vampires didn't really stand a chance. The confusion of blood and screams, steel and whirling darkness seemed to go on for a very long time, but it was really only a matter of minutes later when the last vampire dropped to the floor, dead.