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flapping his bat wings to remain in the air, to continue his steady progress.
    Rufo’s cold hand shot out and caught the imp by the throat, breaking the trance. Druzil let out a shriek and instinctively brought his tail about, waving it menacingly in Rufo’s face.
    Rufo laughed and began to squeeze.
    Druzil’s tail snapped into Rufo’s face, its barbed tip boring a small hole.
    Rufo continued to laugh wickedly and squeezed tighter with his horribly powerful grasp. “Who is the master?” the confident vampire asked.
    Druzil thought his head would be popped off! He couldn’t begin to squirm. And that gaze! Druzil had faced some of the most powerful lords of the lower planes, but at that moment, it seemed to the imp that none was more imposing.
    “Who is the master?” Rufo asked again.
    Druzil’s tail fell limp, and he stopped struggling. “Please, master,” he whined breathlessly.
    “I am hungry,” the vampire announced, casually tossing Druzil aside. Rufo strode for the mausoleum door with a graceful and confident gait. As he neared the door, he reached out with his will and it swung open. As he crossed through the portal, it banged closed once more, leaving Druzil alone in the mausoleum, muttering to himself.
    Bachtolen Mossgarden, the library’s cook since Ivan Bouldershoulder had gone away, was also muttering to himself that night. Bachy, as the priests called him, was fed up with his new duties. He had been hired as a groundskeeper-that was what Bachy did best-but with winter thick about the grounds, and with the dwarf gallivanting in the mountains, the priests had changed the rules.
    “Slop, slop, and more stinkin’ slop!” the dirty man grumbled, overturning a bucket of leftover cabbage down a slope behind the squat library. He moved to pick his nose, but changed his mind as the finger, reeking of old cabbage, neared the nostril.
    “I’m even starting to smell like the stinkin’ slop!” he whined, and he banged on the metal bucket, spilling the last of its remains onto the slick, stained snow, and spun about to leave.
    Bachy noticed that it had suddenly grown much colder. And quieter, he realized a moment later. It wasn’t the cold that had given him pause, but the stillness. Even the wind was no more.
    The hairs on the back of Bachy’s neck tingled and stood on end. Something was wrong, out of place.
    “Who is it?” he asked straightforwardly, for that had always been his way. He didn’t wash much, he didn’t shave much, and he justified it by saying that people should like him for more than appearance.
    Bachy liked to think of himself as profound.
    “Who is it?” he asked again, more clearly, gaining courage in the fact that no one had answered the first time. He had almost convinced himself that he was letting his imagination get the best of him, had even taken his first step back toward the Edificant Library, the back door of the kitchen only twenty yards away, when a tall, angular figure stepped in front of him, standing perfectly still and quiet.
    Bachy stuttered through a series of beginnings of questions, never completing a one. Most prominent among them was Bachy’s pure wonderment at where this guy had come from. It seemed to the poor, dirty cook that the man had stepped out of thin air, or out of shadows that were not deep enough to hide him!
    The figure advanced a step. Overhead, the moonlight broke through a cloud, revealing Rufo’s pallid face.
    Bachy wavered, seemed as if he would fall over. He wanted to cry out but found no voice. He wanted to run, but his tegs would barely support him while standing still.
    Rufo tasted the fear, and his eyes lit up, horrid red flames dancing where his pupils should have been. The vampire grinned evilly, his mouth gradually opening wide, baring long fangs. Bachy mumbled something that sounded like, “By the gods,” then he was kneeling in the snow, his legs having buckled underneath him.
    The sensation of fear, of sweet, sweet fear,