CHILD OF AN ANCIENT CITY by Tad Williams and Nina Kiriki Hoffman is about a group of soldiers that cross from baghdad to the northern landsand on this journey they encounter a beastly vampire:

that was once human and one by one the soldiers start to die and the survivors are offered a challenge who ever tells the saddest story is able to go by the vampire but the vampire has a story of it's own to tell and if his story is the saddest then they must choose who they sacrifice to the vampire and each night no matter how far they travel he always comes back to hear and tell the saddest stories.

the book begins with people sitting at a table and they all want to hear how they survived their encounter with the vampire so as soon as the caravan goes to their targeted destination they are attacked by bandits and most of them are kill and after a series of events they find one of their comrads dead and they think that the legendof the vampire is real and the only way to get by his desert is to sad stories and see if their story is sad enough  to beat him.

the stories begin as one man tells his about meeting a man with perfect balance able to stand on the air and when he tries to learn this technique he throws off his balance and he plumits to the ground and dies. 

one of the stories is about a man that comes to take a womans hand in marriage but there is a test he has to first kill a white leopard that has been terrorizing the village and killing the villagers all others have failed but he succeeds in killing the leopard but when he kills it it transforms into the girl he is supposed to marry.

the last story is the vampires and his is about a child of an ancient who had everything for himself