In the following weeks, David found that that night's work had done one thing. It had let the vampires know for certain that something was hunting them. Before this he had killed in the open, and sunlight had burned the bodies until they were dust. But the carnage in the underground lair remained through the day, and into the night. Whatever socialization or communication there was among vampires, it was enough to spread the story abroad. Something was hunting vampires. Something terrible.

It was gratifying to have his reputation so aided, but it was also a little annoying. The vampires were taking to traveling in packs. Asocial they might be, but they were also absolutely dedicated to one thing and one thing alone, and that was their own survival at all costs.

David didn't want to risk attacking a large group. He had been lucky, incredibly lucky, to have won the battle in the cellar lair. It could very easily have gone the other way. Just one vampire with a weapon, just one that wasn't intimidated, just one that really knew how to fight and he'd have been dragged down.

Some of them were going just in threes or fours, and those groups he would venture, if he found one, but he no longer happened across solitary vampires. The days of easy kills were past.

He found also that his reputation was growing with the humans. When he was able to rescue one, he was greeted with recognition and tentative thanks as often as terror now. Some humans might not know of him, and others might not be able to believe in a good vampire, but some did, and there were even a very few, here and there, who actually did as Mack had done, and offered him the blood he needed freely. He was always amazed by such offers. He doubted he could have done such a thing when he had been human. But he always accepted them with profound thanks. He hated the guilt of taking what he needed. To be given it, with no need of taking, was amazing. And somehow it gave him faith that there was a point to his solitary battle after all. He knew the vampires were still finding victims, he could not possibly save them all, but he was saving the ones he could, and each of those lives meant something. Each of those lives was a human life, a life that could do such an incredible thing as offer a gift of blood to a vampire.