By Blood We Live

But the woman went behind the bar, jingled some keys and opened a drawer. She took out a small bag, generously poured coffee beans into a hand grinder and started solemnly rotating the lever as if she were performing a sacred ritual. To a certain degree, it was just that.

Denis waited, looking as if he were enchanted.

The coffee that the woman brought to him in a big red mug was boiling hot. But the most important thing was the fact that it smelled like coffee.

"Where did this luxury come from?" Denis asked, after taking a sip.

"From past life. There is always something left from the past life."

Denis nodded silently.

"Do you want to have a bite to eat?" The woman asked. "I'm not offering you a banquet-you can't fight on a full stomach. But they'll come to the city at noon; you'll have time for a snack."

"Okay," Denis said, although he was full. "What can you recommend?"

"I hate fish," the woman said. "But I have good steaks. Honestly."

"Give me one-well-done and not too big." A young girl peeked into the dining hall from the kitchen. She had a pale face and tightly pursed lips. "Is she afraid of me?"

"She's afraid of everyone," the woman answered without turning. "Ever since she was dragged away last year. They kept her for three days."

The girl was about fourteen or fifteen. "Don't you worry," Denis said, although he knew that the woman would not believe him, "I

will kill all of them."

"There are eighteen of them," the woman answered. He liked her precision.

"I know. That's not too many."

Her look changed ever so slightly, as if she had begun to believe him.

"Take this." The woman's hand dove into the neck of her dress and pulled out a chain. "This is an icon of the Mother of God. I believe it was what saved my daughter."

"No," Denis said, and gently but firmly stopped her hand. "I can't take it. But you'll help me immensely if in a half-hour you bring me another cup of coffee."

"If you kill them all, I'll make you a cappuccino," the café owner said. "With foam."

They drove into town from the sea side, the side of the pier where, in a leisurely manner, they set a couple of old barns on fire. The fishermen had long ago gone off to sea in their little boats, taking their wives, children, and more or less all of their valuable household possessions.

Five of the gang rode horses, the rest huddled on two horse-drawn carts. In one of the carts a machine gun was set on a turret, and behind the machine gun, sitting on an old office chair, a young woman was stooped over-all decked out in black leather with silver buttons glistening in the sun. Denis watched her with amusement. Vampires, of course, aren't afraid of either the sun or silver. They can be killed just like people-it's just…more difficult.

The town had become deserted. The residents did not dare look at what was happening even out of the corners of their eyes. However-in one of the windows of the café the drape was moving slightly. Denis smiled in that direction then returned his attention to the two carts and five riders.

When they saw Denis standing in the middle of the street, they slowed down slightly and began to move more cautiously, looking from side to side, cocking their rifles, and switching off the safeties on their revolvers and automatic weapons. Denis waited patiently until they completely surrounded him. The girl with the machine gun was chewing gum and gave him a look of scorn, but without animosity.

"What is this, some kind of fucking cowboy…" the leader-Anton Pavlovich, Denis remembered-said. He was middle-aged but not old-strong, with keen, intelligent eyes. He wore a gun in an open holster and rode the best horse. Since it wasn't a question, Denis preferred to remain silent. "It was you who killed Andrei," Pavlovich said.

"Me," Denis said.

Pavlovich nodded, thinking. "Well," he said, "if that was your way of asking to join our gang, I'll take you. I was tired of that

soplyak anyway."

"Are you the Master?" Denis asked.

"What?"

"Are-you-the Master? That's what the leader of a vampire pack is called. Or don't you even know that much?"

A fat man riding beside Pavlovich laughed. The girl with the machine gun smiled.

Pavlovich sighed: "Kill him!"

The first bullet struck the girl with the machine gun right between the eyes.

Denis side-stepped right, pulling Pavlovich's second-in-command down from his horse and throwing him onto the cart, knocking down the other gang members as if they were bowling pins. At the end of the cart, he lay still, his neck broken.

The second bullet tore through the heart of a man holding an automatic rifle.

The third targeted the face of a girl holding a shotgun. At the very last moment she jerked and the bullet tore off part of her ear, and so Denis had to shoot a fourth time.

The fifth and sixth bullets felled two guys with revolvers who were the spitting image of each other (brothers? twins?).

The last one, the seventh, entered the stomach of a man who'd tried to jump Denis-an Asian with shortly cropped hair and cold, merciless eyes.