He submits

The boy wilts under the scrutiny, but comes forward. rolling up his sleeve and offering a wrist. He cringes under Karl's disapproving frown. He knows what fate awaits him under the fangs of the Watcher. I take the proffered wrist, slice into it with the fangs that replaced my canines long past. The sacrifice of blood is merely symbolic, required to shape the link between a thrall's aura and my own. The metallic taste sends shivers through me and warms my body, but it is nothing next to the flow of essence that follows. My muscles loosen, my joints move more smoothly. My body remembers being alive as my aura is flooded with the stuff of life. Faint echoes of biology resume; my withered heart beats once, then again, sending heat flowing around my extremities. With regret I back off, cut the link. The boy sags, staring for a moment at the scabbed wound on his wrist and then up at me. I catch a hint of wonder.

Karl watches, considering. The wheels turn in his mind. I do not drain my victims dry, therefore my essence is less than his. I keep my victims, so I must be a poor hunter, and they present a potential weakness. I do him the credit of imagining that he's concerned with my usefulness as an ally.

They are waiting for me. Trapped like rats in a tunnel, the foe closing in. The two guards still watch the passage, but there are perhaps thirty watching me, trying not to look like they're staring. They're armed, mostly, a ramshackle assortment of cobbled-together weapons. And we had Karl, with his bloated aura. I inhaled, closed my eyes, cast my senses out. The room of hearbeats faded as I focused beyond, smelling and listening down the passage ahead.

More of them, certainly, and better equipped. Calm heartbeats muffled behind steel. The cold whiff of sorcery oozed around them. No focal point. Perhaps a mage present, but no demon. Good. I smile, let my fangs show, then reach out a hand. Someone lays a spear into it. A rough-built thing, a broom handle and a knife. What a picture we make. Me, barely alive and clothed in a burlap sack, my cobbled-together weapon. One thrall huddled in the corner hoping to escape notice, another half-asleep and probably very surprised to find herself alive. A squadron of untrained peasants, an overfed but untrained vampire, no expendable undead, and an armed professional **** which may have a mage with them blocking our only exit.

I open my eyes. They are still staring, openly now, uncertain. Am I the great lord they have awaited all these years, or just some senile old bat? I ground the spear, rap the haft once on the floor, and announce "Follow!" in my most sonorous voice. The first rule of leading men into battle: Never show doubt that your orders will be followed. I stride between the guards down the passage towards the foe, and slowly the breath and heartbeats behind me are joined by the sound of footsteps shuffling down the passage.