When Abel woke up, he did not know if he had been asleep for hours or days. He was stripped bare and lying on his back beneath a blanket made of bear pelt. He was shivering, and as he reached out, he realized his skin had turned a pale blue. His head was pounding. He could not hear anything. All his senses seemed to be dimmed, in fact.

He gently pushed himself up off the ground until he was sitting up. Every limb in his body felt like it had turned to jelly, as if all the bones were gone. He glanced around the hut he was sleeping in, but he did not see anyone. He smacked the side of her face lightly to see if he could feel the sensation, and he felt instead a dull ache.

Abel got up and nearly fell over again until he reached his feet and held his hands out from his sides to regain balance. There were no windows, and the only door was locked.

Abel blinked slowly and tried to figure out where he was and how he had gotten there. Rubbing his temples gently and finding them so cold his fingers nearly stuck to them, Abel remembered dimly what had happened after the vial had struck him. Was it a memory, though, or just a dream? He had seen a face, seen someone whose eyes were blank with no irises or pupils, someone whose hair was blacker than the darkest ebony and yet immaculately brushed. This man smiled and when he did Abel saw that his teeth were black as well, his tongue forked and shivering as its twin prongs peeked out beneath two razor-sharp canine teeth. A dream, brought on by whatever had been in that vial.

Abel shuddered.

He also remembered drifting in and out of consciousness. At one point, he felt a sickening cold invade his body and knock his breath away. This whole time, he had not heard a word. Now, when he looked around the room the edges of his vision pulsated and blurred. He felt thoroughly confused, bewildered, and terrified, but he had no energy to do anything about it.

A little while later, he heard the door unlock and saw Belial. The fallen angel crouched in front of Abel and spoke.

"So I suppose by now you've realized that we can easily kill you," Belial said.

"I . . . why? Why are you doing this?"

"You forget," Belial said, "I am a fallen angel. I am an ice vampire that some call a demon. And I always get what I want."

"Let me go," Abel said. "We have done you no harm."

In response Belial flipped his shiny blond hair behind him and leaned forward until he was right in front of him. "You're dead, child of Eve. Help us, and we'll let you go."

With that, he smacked Abel hard across the face and pushed up off the ground. As Belial turned to go, Abel spoke once more. "We are not monsters," he whispered.

Belial turned back briefly. "Then you won't forget that your life isn't the only one at stake," he said coldly. "We have your brother and your lover. We will keep Ruth as hostage once you go, to ensure your good behavior. Think on that."

***

Cain lay in another room, as weak and cold as his brother. Belial had visited him as well, but had gotten even less out of him. He had never felt this betrayed, this alone. He had loved living here, in this village, among his own kind-among those he had believed thought and lived as he did. He had thought that, after a thousand years of wandering, he had finally found a home.

How wrong he had been. How wrong, how wrong. He wrapped his arms around his head and wept with self-pity, too weak and drained to do anything else. Then he stopped weeping and stared up at the ceiling, trying to think. It had always been Abel who had come up with the plans, who had decided where they were to go next. But Abel was separated from him and might be counting on Cain to rescue himself.

But without his prodigious strength, how could Cain even get out of the room?

The answer came, as such answers often do, in the most unexpected form. As he was contemplating these things, he heard the door unlock. He was too weak to spring for it, but he did look up, and he saw, to his amazement, a servant girl no older than seventeen.

"You are Cain," she said to him. "Vampire of a fire dragon, not of ice."

"That's right," he said wearily.

"We heard what you said," the girl went on. "The other servants and I. We saw how to tried to protect us." She knelt down by his bed and spoke quietly, fervently. "We're not servants here; we're slaves. They kidnap us from villages and towns. They took me two years ago, and I have lived in terror and drudgery ever since. They give us fine clothes and treat us like cattle. If you free us, if you get us out of here, then I will help you."

"I can't help you," Cain said weakly. "I can't even help myself."

"That is because you've been dosed with crow's blood," she told him. "But there is a cure for that. You must wash it out of your system with other blood, pure blood."

"But I cannot hunt," he objected.

"You don't need to," she told him. "I come to you willingly."

He recoiled in disgust.

"They do not feed on all of us each month, and I was spared this month. Feed from me now, let me give you my strength."

"Never!"

"Do it."

"I'm not a monster!"

"No," she agreed, "you're not. You're not a monster because I'm doing this voluntarily, don't you see? This is my choice. This is my payment for my freedom."

He was shaking his head in amazement. "I don't want to," he whispered. "What if I become like them? What if I crave human blood always because I've had it once?"

"They are the vampires of an ice dragon," she said sternly, "you of fire. You say you are not a monster. Well, only a monster would leave us in slavery, as food for monsters. Save us. Save them. Even if you kill me, I will think this worth it. If you are not a monster, then you must be a monster slayer. Destroy these monsters, these ice dragon spawn, and even if you destroy all of us with them, at least they will take no more to assuage their demonic thirsts. Take my blood and be strong and save us all."

With a small knife, the girl slit her own wrist and held it to his lips. Too weak to resist, he let the blood trickle into his mouth. And then he grabbed her wrist in his hands and drank and drank until her heart began to slow. Then he thrust her away from him, lest he kill her.

"Good," she murmured weakly, already falling unconscious. And, "Thank you."

The door opened again by some unspoken signal, and two more servants came in, a woman not much older than the first and a man. Cain leapt to his feet, strong, fast, and recovered.

"I'll take care of her," the woman said. And then, wryly, "We get a lot of practice with this sort of thing. Now go, fulfil your promise. This is Ninian; he will help you."

Ninian bowed. "Tell me what to do, and I will obey," he said.

Cain tried to think quickly, tried to think as Abel would. "I cannot take on your masters singlehanded," he said. "I need to prepare, and I need my brother's help. I will need a disguise, and help reviving my brother. While I'm doing that, have the other servants build a great fire. That is the way to defeat the vampires of an ice dragon-by fire. Do you have any stakes of wood?"

They did. They used them to put down temporary encampments, for gardening, and for hunting. But some of their people had tried hurting the vampires with wood before, and it did no good.

"The wood is only to set alight," Cain said grimly. "Take these stakes and put their ends in the fire. When the time comes, have all the servants arm themselves. My brother and I will fight, but once each vampire is disabled, you must throw him on a great pyre before he can heal. Do you understand?"

They did, and Cain could see they were pleased by his words. Ninian went to get Cain a disguise and to tell the other servants the plan. The woman tended to the girl who had fed Cain. Cain looked at her, feeling awkward. "My brother-" he began.

"I understand," she said. "Your brother will need to feed as well."

"Yes."

"I will go with you," she said. "I am no good in a fight, but my blood is strong still." She smiled as he shifted from foot to foot. "How different you are from the ice vampires! When they spoke of the children of fire coming, we were afraid. We thought you'd be worse than them, that you would burn us as soon as look at us."

Cain dropped his eyes to his feet. "My brother and I have been alone for cycles upon cycles," he said quietly. "We never imagined there would be others of our kind. It seems we were right."

The stood like that in silence until Ninian returned with a bundle of clothing like that the servants wore and also gave him an incredibly sharp stone knife. Cain swiftly shed his heavy robes and put on the new clothing, relishing the increased flexibility of movement now at his command. As Ninian went to prepare again, Cain and the woman, whose name was Genovefa, scurried across the village to Abel's prison. It was daytime, and there were few vampires about, and none who could be bothered to give their attention to a pair of lowly slaves.

Cain went first into the house where Abel was, and there he encountered a vampire whom he had seen around. The vampire was a man with an angelic face and a prominent widow's peak. He recognized Cain and started, but Cain was ready for him and faster. He swarmed forward and struck with his knife, hewing the vampire's head from his shoulders. He let the body fall where it was, but the head he took with him, to throw into the first fire he found.

He tried very hard not to think about what he had just done, and what he would soon have to do again-for there were twenty more vampires to go.

There were no more barriers. Cain woke his brother and Genovefa gave him her wrist, sacrificing her vitality for his. Afterwards, Cain gabbled out his plan, Abel nodding.

"You have a gift for this sort of thing," Abel said. "But let's not be too hasty. Most of the vampires are asleep, and it will be easiest to take them one by one, if we can. Can you walk, Genovefa?"

She could, albeit weakly.

"Then take that head and throw it upon the fire and return. We will go house to house, taking the heads of those we can, together. One of them cannot beat two of us.

It was gristly work. Moving like wraiths from house to house, Cain and Abel went: Abel holding the bodies, Cain chopping and sawing off heads. They had slain more than half the vampires in this way, giving the heads to servants to burn, before they came across a house which had three vampires, awake, alert, and playing some sort of game.

Surprise was the only thing that saved Abel and Cain. Even as the ice vampires were rising to their feet, the brothers were leaping forward. Cain's knife caught the first one's neck, and blood spurted, nearly blinding Cain. He blinked furiously, chopping again, trying to get the head all the way off. But another ice vampire was coming at him, and the knife spun from his grip. The new vampire grabbed him and wrapped him in a deadly embrace, fangs plunging into his neck.

With a roar, Abel threw off the vampire he was fighting and grabbed the one attacking Cain, bearing to the ground and stomping hard upon his head, so that skull and brain burst beneath his bare foot.

The vampire on the ground was recovering, but the wound on his neck was great enough that Cain, with his tremendous strength, could wrench head from shoulders.

Now there was only one vampire left in the room, and he didn't wait to be killed. He dove out the window, shouting for help, shouting that the fire vampires had turned on them and were slaying them.

Cain and Abel exchanged a glance and dove after him, tackling him and tearing at him. He struggled, and Abel was thrown off.

But now the slaves came into their own. Three of them rushed forward with smoldering stakes and plunged the weapons into the ice vampire. The ice vampires screamed and writhed, but the stakes-or perhaps the fire-seemed to make him unable to fight, and the servants between them carried the body into the lodge and threw it upon the great fire therein.

But the ice vampire's cries had done their work, and out of the houses came swarming all the remaining ice vampires, six of them-including Belial.

After that, everything was frenzy. It was six to one, but Abel and Cain were strong and fit, and had lived off their wits for a thousand years; whereas the ice vampires had grown fat and lazy over the centuries, preferring to have all their work done for them. Nevertheless, it was a terrible struggle, and Cain and Abel would never have prevailed but for the servants, who took to their staking duties with the fervor of hatred, almost as if they had adopted their masters' bloodlust. Although a single strike from a vampire could kill a human, and several slaves died, they kept coming. Every time Cain or Abel struck a vampire or bore him to the earth, there came half a dozen slaves with burning stakes.

Of all the ice vampires, there was only one who had regularly gone further abroad, whose wits were keener than his fellows:

Belial.

He fought with the grace of a fallen angel until only he remained, in the middle of a circle of furious slaves, facing two fire vampires who had already slain twenty of his kindred.

"I'm the last one," Belial said, his melodic voice primal. "More than a thousand years of life, and I'm the only one left. Is that what you wanted, children of Eve? To destroy the last of your kind? To be alone on this Earth?"

"You are not of our kind," Abel said.

"No," said Cain. "You're a monster, and you'll be exterminated like a monster."

Belial snarled and flew at them, but neither Cain nor Abel moved. They didn't have to. Seeing the final and wickedest of their masters alone and vulnerable, all the remaining servants threw themselves forward, stabbing and tearing and ripping until nothing but pieces of the master vampire remained, and these pieces were thrown upon the fire.

Abel and Cain staggered, weary, in the center of the village, their strength drained as surely as if another vampire had taken their blood. Ruth emerged from the crowd of servants, dirty and bloody but radiant, and threw herself on Abel, hugging him and kissing his face. He held her weakly, sighing. Cain turned away.

Cain didn't know how long they stood there, but eventually Ninian came up to them. His face was smudged with ash and blood, but he was standing straight, the mantle of slavery thrown off. "This is our village now," he told them. "We thank you for your help."

"You're welcome."

"We thank you for your help," he repeated, "but we don't need it anymore. We've had enough of masters and of vampires, and we know how to defeat both now. For your own sake, we urge you to leave us immediately."

Cain looked down at him. He knew, even if this man didn't, that even in their weakened state, he and Abel could slay all of the servants.

He did not say this. He bowed his head in acknowledgement and then he and his brother and Ruth, exhausted of mind and body, turned and slowly walked away from the village they had saved.