Carpe Jugulum

He added to himself: if that is indeed the real bird…
    It swooped up into the tower. A yell, cut off quickly, indicated that a vampire hadn’t been fast enough.
    “It doesn’t burn itself?” Oats said, weakly.
    “Shouldn’t think so,” said Granny, stepping over the wreckage. “Wouldn’t be much point.”
    “Then it must be magical fire…”
    “They say that whether it burns you or not is up to you,” said Granny. “I used to watch them as a kid. My granny told me about ’em. Some cold nights you see them dancin’ in the sky over the Hub, burnin’ green and gold…”
    “Oh, you mean the aurora coriolis,” said Oats, trying to make his voice sound matter-of-fact. “But actually that’s caused by magic particles hitting the—”
    “Dunno what it’s caused by,” said Granny sharply, “but what it is , is the phoenix dancin’.” She reached out. “I ought to hold your arm.”
    “In case I fall over?” said Oats, still watching the burning bird.
    “That’s right.”
    As he took her weight the phoenix above them flung back its head and screamed at the sky.
    “And to think I thought it was an allegorical creature,” said the priest.
    “Well? Even allegories have to live,” said Granny Weatherwax.

Vampires are not naturally cooperative creatures. It’s not in their nature. Every other vampire is a rival for the next meal. In fact, the ideal situation for a vampire is a world in which every other vampire has been killed off and no one seriously believes in vampires anymore. They are by nature as cooperative as sharks.
    Vampyres are just the same, the only real difference being that they can’t spell properly.
    The remnant of the clan scurried through the keep and headed for a door that for some reason had been left ajar.
    The bucket containing a cocktail of waters blessed by a Knight of Offler, a High Priest of Io and a man so generically holy that he hadn’t cut his hair or washed for seventy years, landed on the first two to run through.
    They did not include the Count and his family, who had moved as one into a side tower. There’s no point in having underlings if you don’t let them be the first to go through suspicious doors.
    “How could you have been so—” Lacrimosa began, and to her shock got a slap across the face from her father.
    “All we need to do is remain calm,” said the Count. “There’s no need to panic.”
    “You struck me!”
    “And most satisfying it was, too,” said the Count. “Careful thought is what will save us. That is why we will survive.”
    “It’s not working !” said Lacrimosa. “I’m a vampire! I’m supposed to crave blood! And all I can think about is a cup of tea with three sugars in it, whatever the hell that is! That old woman’s doing something to us, can’t you see?”
    “Not possible,” said the Count. “Oh, she’s sharp for a human, but I don’t reckon there’s any way she could get into your head or mine—”
    “You’re even talkin’ like her!” shouted Lacrimosa.
    “Be resolute, my dear,” said the Count. “Remember—that which does not kill us can only make us stronger.”
    “And that which does kill us leaves us dead !” snarled Lacri-mosa. “You saw what happened to the others! You got your fingers burned!”
    “A moment’s lapse of concentration,” said the Count. “That old witch is not a threat. She’s a vampire. Subservient to us. She’ll be seeing the world differently—”
    “Are you mad? Something killed Cryptopher.”
    “He let himself be frightened.”
    The rest of the family looked at the Count. Vlad and Lacrimosa exchanged a glance.
    “I am supremely confident,” said the Count. His smile looked like a death mask, waxen and disturbingly tranquil. “My mind is like a rock. My nerve is firm. A vampire with his wits about him, or her, of course, can never be defeated. Didn’t I teach you this? What’s this one?”
    His hand flew from his pocket, holding a square of white cardboard.
    “Oh, Father this is really no time for—” Lacrimosa froze, then jerked her arm in front of her face. “Put it away! Put it away! It’s the Agatean Chlong of Destiny!”
    “Exactly, which is merely three straight lines and two curved lines pleasantly arranged which—”
    “—I’d never have known about if you hadn’t told me, you old fool!” screamed the girl, backing away.
    The Count turned to his son.
    “And do you —” he began. Vlad sprang back, putting his hand over his