Picus the Thief is part of the Small Vampire series by author Robin Bennett. Picus has a lot of powerful enemies. His aristocratic parents have disowned him for supposedly being a coward; the violent vampire, Raben, is after him to exact revenge for theft; the faie, Queen Mab (aka the Tooth Fairy), wants his teeth; and the vampire Eltern want him to steal the sacred sword of Exkylipyr for them or else lock him up in a dungeon. In the course of avoiding Raben and Mab, he goes to Angleland, befriends the humans and the witch Ambrosias and manages to win (not steal) the sword he was sent to pinch. But on his return he faces the ultimate test, to keep Exkylipyr from his family and thereby prevent her from starting a civil war amongst the vampires. Small Vampires is essentially a grail quest story set amongst vampires and others in the Hidden Kingdom. After a period of several millennia, this furtive world is beginning to clash with the human world.
