Normally Malcolm Reynolds didn't worry too much when he had a gun pointed at him, after all it wasn't as if the bullets could actually hurt him. However, as he stood on the ramp that led inside the belly of his ship, Serenity, Mal could tell that the bullets inside the guns pointed at him and his first mate, Zoe Washburn, were actually silver bullets, hollow points filled with garlic if the smell was any indication, and silver bullets had a tendency to hurt vampires, and if they blew away his heart it might even kill him.

So Malcolm Reynolds, master vampire, stood on the ramp of Serenity with his hands in the air facing the three men who were pointing guns loaded with silver bullets at himself and his first mate. Two of the men were short, dirty and obviously unwilling to negotiate. The third interested Mal quite a bit. Since the night in Serenity Valley while he and the rest of the survivors waited for the Alliance and the Independents to negotiate a surrender and a master vampire turned a bitter and broken Mal Reynolds into a vampire, Mal had grown in power. Some more knowledgeable vampires believed it was caused by the anger and resentment that had built up in Mal watching wounded men and women dying while two factions talked about surrender for two weeks after they laid down arms on Hera. Mal became a Master Vampire in less that seven years, something that took some vampires at least a century or more to do.

One of the benefits that came from becoming a master vampire was an mastery of certain animals. Mal's animal was the tiger, a species so rare only a handful existed in zoos on the Core planets. That mastery, however, included were-tigers, and Mal could sense that the big man holding a gun and clenching a cigar between his teeth was a were-tiger.

Mal smiled and called upon his powers. Marco and his other henchmen were obviously nulls, they did not feel the power building inside the master vampire, but they saw its effects even if they didn't know what it was.

The big were-tiger grunted, his arm