Effective tale from the point of view of a one of the members of a group of vampires - but these are not in any way the romantic vampires of most modern fiction, or even the rougher predators of Near Dark or Blade. They are barely a society, simply a pack of predators. The narrator makes the distinction between flesh ( the living on whom they prey ) meat ( vampires ) and dead meat ( people who have been killed, usually by being fed on ) and this demonstrates that they know they are not only not human, but less than the humans they once were; they have lost memories and vocabulary, and live almost entirely by instinct. ( )