For decades it’d been a safe place to wait out the sunlight. Other undead walked amidst these gravestones beneath the moonlight, but we had long ago come to a kind of arrangement.

Only now all that was changing. My old allies had begun to fall, one by one, and no one knew who or what was killing them.

It had only been a matter of time before they came for me, but I would not abandon my home. I was too powerful, and too proud.

A figure approached me in the graveyard. He was making no attempt to hide, unaware my eyes could see quite clearly in the black of night.

He was wearing dark clothing with a hood that masked his face. When he realized that I was watching him, he threw something in my direction and charged.

I stopped the projectile in mid-air. It was a knife that had been crudely carved from a tree branch. So, my foe knew that I was vampire.

With a wave of my hand, I sent the weapon hurtling back towards him. The point hit him square in the shoulder, bouncing away with a scraping sound.

There was no sign of blood. I wondered if he wore some sort of body armor.

He drew near, brandishing a shortsword of dark wood.

I called upon my magics to charm or confuse him, but I could get no grip on his mind.

No matter. He took a clumsy stab at my chest which I easily evaded. While he recovered his balance, I spun behind him and sank my fangs through his hood.

My teeth met with nothing beneath it, so I grabbed him by the shoulders to hold him still and bit in deeper.
I tasted neither flesh nor blood. Instead, my fangs scraped along the cold bone of his vertebrae.

He shifted and a pain tore through my chest. Stunned, I dropped to the ground gasping. His blade had staked my heart.

My foe threw back his cowl and coughed a dry, rasping laugh. He leered at me from the empty sockets of his bare skull and gloated:

“You should have left when you had the chance, Count. This turf belongs to us skeletons now!”