As soon as the night fell, he left his room and headed to the main hall of the house. The servants, as usual, had left the building at the sunset, leaving the all the lights on, and the fire warming the library. He had always considered this as a good policy to avoid the attention of his neighbors that would only consider him an eccentric, excepting when, like now, the hunger would stimulate every fiber of his being.

With a groan he opened the shelf hidden behind the books that he had collected through long years and countless travels. Only two bottles left. Barely enough, he thought. Again he groaned, this time with rage and frustration. He was already tired of the anonymous life, of being barely surviving, of the taste of filth beasts contaminating his palate. It was time already to leave this little town. The big and overpopulated cities from which he had gone away decades ago, tired and bored, seemed now a bright opportunity to recover the pleasures and the power he had renounced to, trying to deny his own nature, his own darkness.

Yes, the darkness was calling him again: The hunger, the pleasures, and the thirst for the fear and the smell of adrenaline. The time for the hunter had come once again.

Almost with disgust he drank the content of a bottle, and put the other in his saddlebag. He changed into his traveling clothes and saddled the horse, and slowly rode toward the city, never turning back to watch the fire consuming the house and the shame it represented.

About an hour left for midnight when the sound of music and laughter, and the lights coming from a barn nearby, attracted his attention. He tied the horse among the trees and silently approached to the building. It was some kind of clandestine celebration, with men and women too old to like to follow the rules, any rules, and too young to understand the wisdom of their elders. His eyes sparkled with the reflection of the lights while as lips parted slowly, avidly and his canines grew longer. Then he saw what he was wishing to find: a young woman, beautiful and healthy, walked away from the group and out of the barn.

He followed her close, very carefully, not making the slightest noise. He was so close that he could hear her heart beating excitedly because of the music and, most likely, some drinks. Then he smiled, a smile that would paralize any mortal being, and his wet fangs glistened under the moonlight when he intentionally broke a branch of a shrub right behind her. She turned back startled, not realizing that her fear was feeding the thirst of the one hunting her.

He couldn't repress a sigh of satisfaction when she, terrified, saw the face of a man that with a single movement, agile and precise, started feeding of her warm and slightly sweet blood. It was ambrosia, the nectar of the gods of the lust and the darkness...

He jumped onto his horse and rode toward the city, smiling satisfied, embracing again his own nature, not turning to watch the fire that consumed an old barn, not turning to hear the screams of anguish, pain and fear that announced his return to the dark side.