Nothing stirred in the warm, still air of a summer's night.  Even the trees themselves seemed to hold their breath and pray that the dawn would come without harm coming to them, while the night's animals huddled beneath their roots to escape notice.  Not a single light showed in the village, people's shutters closed and their windows and doors barred while they curled up beneath their blankets and pretended that nothing was wrong.<br/><br/>A shadow, a patch of darker black on black, crept through the village.  It moved in the darkest patches, jumping from wall to wall, house to house, before leaping up onto the roof of its target and, in a blink, forming into a human shape crouched on the point of the roof.  Claws flexed in the thatch and moonlight gleamed off sharp fangs as the vampire grinned to himself and effortlessly climbed down the sloping roof towards the window behind which his intended victim lay.  A child, barely more than six, who stared wild-eyed at the shutters as she heard the soft, scrabbling sounds of the vampire's descent just above her head.  He purred to himself as his keen ears caught the pounding of her little heart, and he reached out to hook his claws under the edge of the shutter.  The wood splintered as he ripped it away, the window glass shattered with a single punch and the child screamed as he climbed through into the room.<br/><br/>By the time her parents scrambled to help she was gone, only a smear of blood on the blankets and the glass across the floor to suggest either she or the vampire had ever been there.  The mother wept into her husband's shoulder as a younger child, a boy, clung to her nightdress fearfully.  No comfort to her that the village council had sent for help.