A loud crashing noise sounded from the rear of the house. The cloaked man’s eyes narrowed. He looked towards the front door, then towards the long hallway that must lead to the kitchen. He could smell them circling the house; this must be one of the last houses left on their agenda.

            The little girl’s eyes widened. She glanced up at her grandfather and took his hand in hers. “Mama and Papa,” she whispered. “And Randy.”

            The stranger ushered the girl and her grandfather into a closet located near the front door and proceeded down the hallway with his left hand beneath the right lapel of his jacket where his sword was sheathed.

            A warm yellow light flooded the living room and hallway, but beyond the hallway there weren’t any lights turned on. That wasn’t a problem for him because he had excellent night vision...so excellent that it didn’t take long for him to spot the still, dark figure hunkered down near the kitchen table.

            He whipped his left hand from the inside of his cloak. The jeweled hilt of the sword reflected the light filtering in from the hallway. His booted feet thundered over the tiled floor.

            The still shape jumped to life with arms outstretched. In its human life, it had been a teenager with thick, red hair and constellations of freckles across his cheeks. The freckles were already starting to fade and a face that had already been pale was becoming even paler. Ripped jeans were baggy around his thin legs and the old, stained t-shirt he wore looked too big for his bird chest. Thick, red goo dribbled down his chin. He’d already fed tonight and he was looking for more innocents to tear apart.

            The kid tilted his head with an eerie, elastic grin on his rubbery lips. “I know who you are,” he taunted. “You’re Iancu. You’re one of us, but you hunt us, right?”

            The cloaked man with the strange-looking sword didn’t respond.

            The kid stumbled backwards until he was flat against the kitchen wall near the window. “Yeah, yeah, you’re him,” the kid said. “I’ve heard about you. You’ve got that weird-looking sword. The flat of the sword is wooden, right? And the blade is steel? I heard you’ve killed a lot of people with that thing.”

            Iancu raised the sword and held it at the teenager’s throat.

            “You don’t have to do this,” the kid whined, starting to look afraid. “I don’t have anything against you or your cause, man. I just...got hungry, that’s all.”

            “You’ve already eaten and yet you’re in here, terrorizing this family,” Iancu accused through clenched teeth.

            The kid stammered, but couldn’t get a sentence out.

            Iancu nicked the kid’s throat with the sword. “I need to know why this place is being attacked.”

            “I told you,” the redhead punk insisted. “We got hungry.”

            Iancu remembered seeing the suit-clad men who were accompanying the hooligans. Something more than a late night snack run was going down. He leaned into the kid, making sure to hold his sword steady. “Something’s going on,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “I know that something is going on. You can continue to play the dummy, or you can fess up. Either way, I’m going to kill you. The next words out of your mouth are just going to determine how slowly you’ll die.”

            The kid glanced left, then right, then left again, as if waiting for someone to come to his rescue. His voice shook when he spoke and he refused to look Iancu in the eyes. “The girl,” he said finally.

            “What girl?”

            “The girl who lives in this house. They want her.”

            “Why do they want her?”

            “I don’t know!” the kid exclaimed with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “All I know is that these big shots told us that we can invade this place and take our fill. The girl, though... the girl is to be left untouched.”

            Iancu arched a look over his shoulder. The hallway was empty and the house was silent, but he knew that the girl and her grandfather were hiding in the closet. He wanted to return to them as soon as possible and get them out of the house. “You don’t know what they want with the girl?”

            “I don’t, I swear I don’t.”

            Iancu didn’t hesitate in decapitating the kid. When he had first started hunting his own kind, he’d felt guilty for killing them. He had hated killing the ones who had been children or teenagers before the change. As he killed the redhead street punk, though, he felt nothing. He felt no remorse at all.

            The head topped with wavy red hair dropped to the floor and collapsed in a pile of dust. His body followed suit, wavering for a moment on its feet until it could no longer stand on its own.

            Iancu turned and stormed down the hall. He reached the closet door and whisked it open. To his relief, the young girl and her grandfather were huddled on the floor, holding each other. “We have to go,” he said. “Now.”

            For some reason, the clan leaders wanted their hands on this young little mystery of a girl. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. What was so special about her that she’d managed to grab the attention of the clan leaders? Did she have psychic abilities? From the smell of her, she was human, but there was something different about her. He couldn’t smell it on her and he couldn’t tell from just looking at her, but the way she moved as she led her grandfather off of the property and the way she’d opened the door before he’d had a chance to manipulate the locks...

            Something is definitely going on here, he thought as he followed the girl and her elder. He hadn’t yet sheathed his sword because he had a feeling that he’d have to use it again.