December 24, 1916
   11:42
   Somewhere in France

   The sickly sweet stench of death was everywhere.

   The freezing night was ripped apart by gunfire, and the screams of the dying and wounded.

   The occasional explosion, screamed orders and the shrill whistles of officers sending men forward to die so they could gain a few feet of frozen ground, then calling back the few survivors.

    The eyes of the vampyre turned the darkness into daylight as they flicked about, missing not a single detail of the corpse no mans land. He dropped into a trench as soundlessly as a falling feather, the long trench coat he had stolen from a victim weeks before did not even rustle so graceful were his movements.

   He was tall for the time he had come from, slender and angellicly beautiful with long wheat colored hair worn in a ponytail, icy crystal blue eyes, and slightly full lips. His aquiline nose, prominent cheekbones and hollowed cheeks sent womens hearts fluttering when they caught a glimpse of him. He stepped over a twisted corpse which had not been cleared away. Such a waste, he thought. War was a time of feasting for for the vampyre. And it was such a waste of blood that many wept.

   Rolf knew war so very well, for he had been in a private war for well over three centuries. Human wars came and went within a few years and in that short period of time they did unbelievable damage.. He heard the soldier before he smelled him. He was putting the bolt back into the rifle he had just cleaned by feel in the darkness.

   As he was using his thumb to move the long cartridges from the stripper clip into the magazine of his mauser rifle Rolf stepped around the bend of the trench. He stood there unseen as he gauged the value of the meal before him. The german soldier was a big, healthy specimen. More than enough to quench his dark thirst. His ears told him that the nearest soldier was at least thirty five yards away. He had no preference which nationality he fed on, he simply found himself onthis side of the invisible, flucuating line which seperated allied and axis troops. The soldier wiped his hands on a rag before digging into his pack, withdrew a canten which had seen better days, sipped from it before replacing it. He rose and walked past the vampyre to resume his post at the edge of the trench. As he fired at a muzzleflash from the other side Rolf moved out to take him.

   He was right behind the doomed man, reaching out a deadly taloned hand when he froze. His vampiric hearing detected it before even the mans fellow soldiers near the man on the other side heard him.

   Slowly the gunfire over there stopped and the sweet voice carried across the no mans land to the German side where the sporadic firing also ceased. The song was "Silent Night" and both sides held their fire as the soldier finished the song to celebrate the turning of christmas day. In the silence he turned his attention to the meal he had planned. But the German soldier began to sing the same song in his native tongue. His voice made the harsh, gutteral language sound as sweet and pure as the enemies had.

   Rolf, Son Of Ulrich, backed away and listened with his appreciation as his black heart grew heavy. He remembered christmas with his family. The warmth, love, gifts and modest peasant feasts, their face came swimming up out of his memory, but they were all gone now. All of them long turned to dust by time.

   The song ended and for several seconds silence reigned over the battlefield. Then, as if at some unseen or heard signal both sides began firing at each other again. The vampyre took a step backwards backwards and looked at the back of the soldiers head as he fired his rifle.

   "I give you life," he said softly. "That is my christmas gift to you." He turned and leapt nimbly from the trench into the deadly hail of bullets which could do him no harm. He would go hungry this night but his memories would warm him as he lay in his coffin.

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