Carpe Jugulum (Discworld 23)

'Run!' Shawn shouted. He drew back the bowstring and fired through the doorway.

The flaming arrow vanished into the noisome darkness. There was a pause of a few heartbeats. Then the tower exploded.

It happened quite slowly. The green-blue light mushroomed up from storey to storey in an almost leisurely way, blowing out stones at every level to give the tower a nice sparkling effect. The roofing leads opened up like a daisy. A faint flame speared the clouds. Then time, sound and motion came back with a thump.

After a few seconds the main doors burst open and the soldiers ran out. The first one was smacked between the eyes by a ballistic king.

Shawn had just started to run back to the fight when someone landed on his shoulders, bearing him to the ground.

'Well, well, one of the toy soldiers,' sneered Corporal Svitz, leaping up and drawing his sword.

As he raised it Shawn rolled over and struck upwards with the Lancrastian Peace-time Army Knife. He might have had time to select the Device for Dissecting Paradoxes, or the Appliance for Detecting Small Grains of Hope, or the Spiral Thing for Ascertaining the Reality of Being, but as it happened it was the instrument for Ending Arguments Very Quickly that won the day.

Presently, there came a short shower of soft rain.

Well... certainly a shower.

Definitely soft, anyway.

Agnes hadn't seen a mob like this before. Mobs, in her limited experience, were noisy. This one was silent. Most of the town was in it, and to Agnes's surprise they'd brought along many of the children.

It didn't surprise Perdita. They're going to kill the vampires, she said, and the children will watch.

Good, thought Agnes, that's exactly right.

Perdita was horrified. It'll give them nightmares!

No, thought Agnes. It'll take the nightmares away. Sometimes everyone has to know the monster is dead, and remember, so that they can tell their grandchildren.

'They tried to turn people into things,' she said aloud.

'Sorry, miss?' said Piotr.

'Oh... just thinking aloud.'

And where had she got that other idea? Perdita wondered, the one where she'd told the villagers to send runners out to other towns to report on the night's work. That was unusually nasty of her.

But she remembered the look of horror on the mayor's face and, later, the blank engrossed expression when he was trying to throttle the Count with his chain of office. The vampire had killed him with a blow that had almost broken him in half.

She fingered the wounds on her neck. She was pretty certain vampires didn't miss, but Vlad must have done, because she dearly wasn't a vampire. She didn't even like the idea of rare steak. She'd tried to see if she could fly, when she thought people weren't looking, but she was as attractive to gravity as ever. The blood-sucking... no, never that, even if it was the ultimate diet programme, but she'd have liked the flying.

It's changed you, said Perdita.

'How?'

'Sorry, miss?'

You're sharper... edgier... nastier.

'Maybe it's about time I was, then.'

'Sorry, miss?'

'Oh, nothing. Do you have a spare sickle?'

The vampires travelled fast but erratically, appearing not so much to fly as to be promising entries in the world long-jump championships.

'We'll burn that ungrateful place to the ground,' moaned the Countess, landing heavily.