The vampires my soul could not keep.

The ten-year-old boy started as a hand slithered out of the darkness and stroked his bangs back.

"This one. I want this one."

The child pulled his head back and tried to somehow creep into the wall and away from this unwelcome touch. He'd given up trying to wake up from this nightmare. He'd tried everything and all he had to show for it was a bruise forming on his left hand from where he'd pinched himself as hard as he could with his right, and the slowly realized dread that he wasn't asleep, he wasn't dreaming, and the very worst nightmare he'd ever had held no darkness like the reality he was now trapped in.

"Look at me, boy." The earthy purr of a female secure in her own superior desirability, even to one as young as he, was augmented by her very nature into a compulsion that destroyed his will. He couldn't disobey, he couldn't resist and found himself staring at the embodiment of his, and humanity's, worst nightmare.

She wasn't awful to look at. She was beautiful, in a way. Even though he was still young, the manhood that until this night had been his destiny recognized her allure. She captured his eyes with a lambent, but glittering gaze, and twined a long strand of her own hair sensuously between her fingers. "Why so frightened? I just want to be your friend."

"You're–you're a–vampire." He didn't trust his voice above a whisper.

"Oh, Garen, did you realize I'm a vampire?" Her mirthful laugh held cruelty, not pleasure. "Oh! My stars!" She clasped both her hands to her cheeks in a gesture of mock surprise. "You're a vampire, too!"

The other vampire, the male who had seized Polk from his bed and brought him to this terrible place, sighed. "Stop teasing him and put him with the others. We need to figure out how we are going to care for all of them until they mature enough to be marketable." He snorted. "Crying babies and sniveling kids. If I'd thought things through I would never have agreed to help you with this scheme. I still think we should drink them, leave, and figure out another way to make money."

The vampire woman rose from her crouch before Polk and whirled on her comrade. "Oh, really? None of your schemes have ever panned out. If we don't do something to improve our position, we're going to be desperate, and desperate vampires find themselves on the wrong end of a hunter's sword. For once, will you just listen and not argue with me?"

Garen rolled his eyes. "Not like I can stop you."

"If," The female vampire started with a clipped, icy tone. "we keep these mewling babies and kids long enough, without giving in and killing them or changing them too soon, we can stop their aging at the right point to make them quite desirable to some of the more surfeited, and affluent, of our brethren. With how much they are willing to pay for a newly-turned concubine, how much do you think they will pay for this one," She swooped and grabbed Polk's chin in her hand. "if we stop his aging somewhere during puberty?"

She knelt next to the quivering boy again and stroked her cold cheek along his bright-red one. "He'd be the perfect companion, consort, or catamite for the right – that is the highest – bidder. Quite likely to be an exquisite thrill, too – trapped forever on the verge of maturity, uselessly grasping at a promised but never-realized, and forever out of his reach, manhood. And we all know how simply awful puberty is for those experiencing it. Hormones racing completely out of control, the urge to do violence running so high..." She stopped to breathe in and waved a gracefully fluttering hand Garen's way for emphasis. "Such a cornucopia of new and delightful experiences would be worth quite a lot to some of our more – venerable, jaded, and more to the point, rich compatriots."

"But the little ones – all they do is cry. It will make me mad long before they age to the point you want to freeze their ages, Lorisse," Garen whined.

"Fine." Lorisse rose to her feet again and reached down for Polk's hand. "Come on, honey, and do me a favor."

"Surely not the kind of favor..." Garen started. Lorisse was at his side in less than an eye blink and cracking the other vampire soundly across the face with the back of her hand. "Don't be crude! He's just a child! Besides, I prefer my partners to be significantly more – mature. He's merchandise that simply needs enough time to ripen before the sale. Nothing more."

Polk shuddered, but quietly. He had an inkling of what these two wanted him for. It sounded – worse than death. No, it sounded even worse that just being turned into a Noble. An eternal hell of a life cut short, and the last gasp of childhood extended beyond any reasonable or bearable endurance. Perhaps if he got away from them, he could figure out a way to escape. But, there were others. Perhaps if he got away, he could bring the sheriff and the other townsfolk back to rescue the others. He was just a kid – a scrawny and scared one at that. He had no illusions that he could do anything to save the others. He barely held the illusion that he could save himself.

"You want to please me, don't you?" The vampire woman's voice purred again in his ear. When he didn't answer, out of his stark fear at realizing she was suddenly so close, she huffed out a sigh that let him know more certainly than words she was at the end of her patience. "Fine. You don't want to upset me, do you?"

Polk still couldn't trust his voice enough to speak so he shook his head rapidly.

"There's a good boy. You do everything you can to get those brats in the next room to quiet down." Lorisse smiled at him. If not for his knowledge that she was a Noble, and that she had plans for him that he didn't quite understand, but he knew were horrible, and that including turning him into a vampire himself, he might have even thought it was a sweet smile. It turned fragile, and brittle, and broke. "If you don't – well, it won't go well for you." She tossed her head at Garen.

Taking the gesture as the unspoken command it was, Garen grabbed Polk around the shoulder with one hand and hauled him from the room. "I still think we should just drink our fill and move on. This scheme has no chance of working."

For as awful as Lorisse was, Polk sensed that Garen was even more prone to simply follow his instincts and deal with the consequences later. Since he kept saying he wanted to kill the children now, Polk wasn't about to do anything to antagonize him, or indeed draw any sort of attention to himself if he could help it.

"Don't think about leaving, boy. These doors alone are too heavy for you to manage, even if you were to somehow convince this whiny group to do anything other than cry. Don't give me any trouble or Lorisse or no, I will kill you. Just kill you – if you're lucky, that is."

The din in the massive chamber revealed on the other side of the huge double doors was incredible. Garen shoved him through the portal, and pulled the doors shut. Nine children, several of whom weren't even old enough to toddle, cried, wailed, and shrieked in terror, loss, hunger, frustration, and physical discomfort. Polk wanted nothing more than to sit down on the stone floor and take up crying, too. But, he was the oldest by far, and it fell to him to somehow, some way, get out of here and let all of their parents know what had happened. There were some things he was capable of, but something like this was something only his ma or pa could solve.

What he could do, for his own sanity at least, was to see about getting the kids to calm down. More or less by accident, he started with the very littlest ones first. Three of them simply had dirty diapers. Polk found what he needed in a pile of stuff in the corner. He grabbed some blankets from the pile after he was done changing the infants, and spread them out on the floor. There was little furniture in the room – only a single, massive chair near the coldest corner of the room. He tried to push it toward the middle, but couldn't budge it. He gave up, and realized there was no way to get the kids up off the cold floor. That was another reason for the crying.

Watching him, some of the older ones started to calm down. They crawled onto the blankets as well. Now that the noise level was lessened, Polk could think better. He recognized only two of the kids for certain, but thought that all of the kids probably came from his town.

His stomach rumbled. Investigating the stuff piled in the corner rewarded him with food. He brought it back to the blankets, and distributed it to everyone old enough to eat on his or her own. Chewing his own meal, Polk wondered how he was going to feed the infants. He knew how to feed his cousin, who was a tiny baby, with a bottle, but there weren't any in the corner. From how they were talking, the vampires were going to keep them for a long time – surely they wouldn't want the babies to starve to death? Maybe he'd ask about it tomorrow. Now that the crying had quieted down, the littlest ones fell asleep and he didn't want to do anything to wake them up again.

He knew he should check around the room, and see if there was any way out other than through the massive stone doors, but he was just so tired. He'd curl up on the blankets for a minute, take a really quick nap, then see about getting himself out of here. He didn't want to leave the other kids behind, but there was no way... he was so tired...

"I must've fallen asleep. I woke because of the most crushing and oppressive feeling... There was a stranger in the room. Tall, dark, eerie – but somehow I knew I could – trust him. I don't know how I knew it, or why – it's not like he smiled or explained, or anythin', I just knew he was there to take all of us away from that wretched place, and back to our homes. There were so many of us kids, it took more than one trip to spirit all of us away. As th' oldest, I had to stay behind until the very end – be th' last one he'd get out of there. Somehow I just knew what he needed me to do to help him in what little way a ten-year-old kid could..."

"Well, this is a bother." Lorisse glared at the lone child left in the room. She had sensed something amiss in the delicious psychic miasma emanating from the room. Losing nine of the ten children certainly explained it. "Let's wait for your would-be rescuer to return together, shall we?"

"St-stay away!"

"Surely you don't think I'll let him – or her – get away with it? Even if your parents were able to afford a dhampir for their wretched rescue attempt, a half-breed is no match for one of Noble blood. Even now, Garen is no doubt bringing the other children back. I told him to let the hunter through. That one I want to deal with – myself."

"Let them go –"

"Now, why would I want to do that? Little boy, what have you got to bargain with?" Lorisse's eyes glittered along with her cold smile.

"I–I'll stay. I won't try to get away. The children's crying was annoying everyone, right? I'm the oldest, so I'd be more–more..." Polk stopped. He had only the faintest notion what the vampires wanted from him, but it still filled him with horror.

"Hmm. An interesting proposition. You are the closest to being the perfect merchandise for us. Perhaps we were too hasty grabbing so many children at once. And, perhaps, in the future, we should focus on those closer to our target age. We wouldn't have to deal with infants and crying children." Lorisse considered Polk's offer. "You're a smart boy. Perhaps I can train you to be more – pleasing to your eventual master."

Polk shuddered. Master? If the hunter didn't return, the boy thought perhaps the best thing for him to do would be to find a way to kill himself. Death by his own hand would be far better than what this evil vampire had planned for him.

"Still, as annoying as they are, I want the children back. What's mine is mine. As for the hunter – I want that one dead for daring to take what is mi–"

Even though Polk was looking at her, he missed it. Between one blink and the next, Lorisse's head somehow disconnected from her neck and her chest sprouted the most hideous and vigorous bloody flower. As her lifeless body fell, the hunter leaped thirty feet as easily as if taking a single step, and placed himself between the door and the child.

"Hide!" The hunter snarled the command at the boy, jerking his head toward a chair near the far corner of the room. Disobedience wasn't an option, even though Polk couldn't help but notice the glowing blood-light in the eyes of his rescuer – not to mention the long, wicked fangs jutting from between his lips.

Vampires poured into the room through the door. Polk was terrified of the noise, and violence, but somehow riding above enough those fears some invisible force sinuously wove its way into his soul to coil terror, and horror, and dread all around his heart. So deep and insidious was this dark despair that he couldn't even whimper or give voice to any protest. He found his fingers clawing into the sheer stone of the wall trying to find some way to get away from this horrific, eerie aura – yet he couldn't tear his eyes away from the battle raging before his very eyes.

The hunter was everywhere at once – hitting vampire after vampire in the most vulnerable and critical areas leaving the dead in his wake – and yet nowhere at the same time whenever their attacks tried to hit him. The hunter moved with unearthly speed and incredible grace, striking many foes in what seemed to be the same scant second. Unable to look away, Polk finally realized that it was the hunter who was the source of the aura that made his soul want to shrivel and die inside of him. Somehow that realization made it easier to bear.

Silver streaked by him to shatter against the wall above his head. He reached a trembling hand toward the white lightning that clattered to the floor next to his foot. Picking it up, Polk realized it was a piece of wood. Looking back at the massive melee in the chamber, he only then realized that the hunter was throwing similar shafts of wood with enough force to pierce entirely through some of his foes. A few more of the lethal wooden bolts and quick sword work destroyed the last few vampires.

"Come!" the hunter snarled, extending one blood-soaked, imperious arm toward the boy. Though scared out of his wits by the aura still pouring from the hunter, the boy hastened to obey the command. He found himself hoisted into the crook of the hunter's left arm. The stone walls of the castle corridors blurred before his gaze. The hunter was running faster than his eyes could even focus.

"Be quiet," his rescuer whispered before he crouched, while still holding the boy, behind a massive statue in a long marble gallery.

Polk kept very still, and tried not to breathe. He couldn't see or hear anything, and wondered what they were hiding from. After several long minutes, he dared to look up, thinking to maybe mouth his question, but lost his train of thought. Not warm, not cold, not human, blood-red eyes glowed down at him. Polk barely noticed the trickle of blood than ran from a cut on the hunter's cheek to the corner of his mouth – the same mouth that had long, white fangs curving down from behind the upper lip.

The oppressive aura damped down, no doubt to help them hide from their pursuers, Polk could easily sense the Hunger now bucking like a living thing within the hunter. Terrified of it – and the hunter – yet somehow, not terrified at the same time, the child mutely turned his chin away, exposing his tender, young throat to the gaze and fangs of the hunter.

The blood-red lips parted, but not in the beginning of a bite. Polk barely had time to recognize the soundless snarl before he was embraced tightly forcing his head against his rescuer's chest. He could feel powerful shudders shake the hunter's frame. A moment later the shudders and the hold pinning him eased and he could pull away again. He looked up and blinked. Gone were the fangs and the eerie blood-light from the hunter's eyes. Before Polk could part his lips in the beginning of the question pressing against the back of his teeth, the hunter locked his attention with his blue-eyed gaze and shook his head warningly. Right. They were still hiding.