He knew the villagers were coming, and if they found him, it would be the end. He had feasted on so many of their brethren for so long, this was bound to happen eventually.
It was why he built the secret compartment in the basement. The one that when you pulled a certain lever, the cold grey paving slabs wrenched apart, and revealed a coffin that sat on crumbling dirt.
He pulled that lever with the light of pitchforks at the window, and shadows on the wall. When her closed the lid, his cape got caught between the velvet and the mahogany, and they nearly spotted him. But glorious darkness won.
When the sleep ended, the coffin groaned more than usual. A good wallop of dust coated his cold, pallid face. He forced himself to the surface, ignoring the grit that hit his six inch fangs, and the muck that got under his long fingernails.
Where the cold stone walls of his cellar should be was a circle of trees, not the mossy oaks of the forest he knew so well, but warped tropical ferns with twisted spines, and a dying yellow grass underneath. A great chunk was missing from the moon overhead, like someone had taken a great bite out of the side. The village was a collection of burning amber lights in a blasted wasteland of sand and pools of toxic water.
Something snuffled. A beast on nodding terms with a rhino and a spider scuttled and plodded towards. Two dozen green eyes encrusted in thick warty skin looked him up and down. The wind rustled through a silent world.
For the first time since dying, the vampire shivered.