After the end of World War One, Isabeau had left the munitions factory.

Her old friend Esther, and Esther's lover, Sarah, had lingered in Leeds for only a few more days, before moving on. Munitions work had been hard on everyone involved, and neither of them had wanted to stay in the place that had so many bad memories.

Once again, Isabeau and Esther had parted ways, and Isabeau had been left alone.

While the rest of the country was celebrating the end of the war, the world had become a dark and lonely place for Isabeau.

She missed the steady presence that Esther had been in her life.

She missed having someone to curl up in bed with at night.

She'd never been in love with Esther, but Esther had given her a purpose. Now she didn't have that anymore. The war had given her something to focus on, something to fight for, but now that was gone too, and of course she was glad that it was over, glad to see an end to the death and the horror, but sometimes she felt like she was in the middle of a very deep lake, frantically treading water and trying to stop herself from sinking.

She was lonely.

After leaving Leeds, she'd travelled around England again, but there'd been no joy in it this time. She'd felt like a ghost, like she was merely existing rather than living.

Now war had come to Britain again, and Isabeau had dragged herself from her fugue.

There'd been enemy air raids during the first war, but nothing like the concentrated brutality of the Blitz.

When it first started, Isabeau had panicked, because what could even a vampire do when death fell from the sky like that, constant and deadly?

But when she saw Londoners rallying together to help dig people out of the wreckage of their bombed houses, she realised that she did have a purpose. She could help.

Now she spent every night walking the London streets, waiting for the bombs to fall, and when they did, she utilised her strength, her speed, and her healing abilities to save as many lives as she could.

Many local people grew used to seeing her around, and though they didn't know who she was, they knew that she worked to save lives. People would offer her tea or cigarettes, or try to share what little food they had – rationing was firmly in place, and food was portioned out in tiny amounts, with many things simply disappearing from the market altogether – and she always politely declined. She didn't need any of those things, and she wouldn't take them from the people who did.

She no longer had time to feel lonely.

There was too much work to be done, too many people to save.

At first, she'd felt strangely detached from the humans in the city. They would never know what she really was, and when this war ended – because, like the one before, it eventually would – she would have to disappear again. Any bonds she forged during this time wouldn't last once it was over.

But then she was reminded of the resilience of these people, of their fierce refusal to let the war break them.

The nurses who worked themselves to the bone, saving as many lives as they could, even though their meagre rations were never enough.

The civilians who packed into the Tube stations by the thousands to shelter from the bombs, lying side by side on the floor and some even on the tracks, none of them knowing if their homes would still be there in the morning, yet still managing to smile and laugh and play games to entertain frightened children.

The fire wardens who risked life and limb to battle incendiaries and try to keep the fires from spreading.

The bus drivers, who continued as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

It reignited Isabeau's fierce pride for the country she had chosen to live in.

It was a flame burning deep inside, keeping her going on the coldest, bleakest, bloodiest nights.

The night after saving the young woman and her baby, after putting that poor trapped person out of their misery, Isabeau was back on the streets. The air raid had already begun. Planes had dropped incendiaries up and down the streets, lighting up the roads and spreading fires that had already begun to rage out of control.

The street that Isabeau was on hadn't fared too badly – the fire wardens had managed to douse the incendiaries before they could cause much damage, but two streets over, the houses were less lucky. A great wall of flame was flickering higher than the rooftops, filling the air with ash and smoke and cinders.

Isabeau had tried to help the wardens put out the fires, but the road had been littered with incendiaries, too many to count, and they simply didn't have the manpower to douse them all. Once the fires had taken hold, there wasn't much she could do. Most of the residents had already been in the bomb shelters in their back gardens, but when it became clear that the fires couldn't be stopped, Isabeau had helped get as many people out of the shelters as possible, sending them to neighbours up and down the street. Anyone who hadn't made it out of the burning houses was dead already. Even Isabeau couldn't survive an inferno.

The Luftwaffe hummed overhead, like a swarm of angry wasps, and Isabeau glared up at them.

"You won't beat us, you bastards," she whispered.

Movement further down the street caught her eye.

A small boy had rushed onto the street so he could look up at the sky.

Isabeau recognised him – little Oliver Brown.

His parents were among those who'd tried to ply her with thermoses of hot tea when they saw her walking the streets.

She hurried towards Oliver, but his father, Frederick, beat her to it. He grabbed his youngest son and hauled him out of the road.

"What are you doing?" he shouted, shaking Oliver. "When the sirens sound, you go to the shelter. You know that."

"I wanted to see the planes," Oliver whimpered, his small face crumpling.

Isabeau's heart went out to him.

Oliver was only three, and he didn't understand how dangerous this was. He had no real concept of war. He just knew that he liked planes, and he couldn't grasp that these planes were dropping bombs on people and blasting them to pieces.

Oliver's mother, Mary, ran to them and scooped Oliver into her arms.

Frederick noticed Isabeau, and gave her a bleak smile. "It's going to be a bad night," he said.

As far as Isabeau was concerned, they were all bad nights, but tonight must feel worse than ever for the Browns, with the terrible fires just two streets away and spreading.

"Are you all alright?" Isabeau asked.

The whistle of falling bombs cut through the air, and Mary let out a little sob and buried her face in Oliver's neck, clutching him tightly as they waited for the bombs to hit.

The road at the very end of the street exploded, spraying rubble through the air.

Frederick gave Mary a frantic little push. "Go on, get to the shelter."

She ran, Oliver clutched tightly in her arms.

Frederick grabbed Isabeau's hand. "Come on, there's room for you too."

"I don't need a shelter," she said.

She started to pull away, but then there was that familiar whistle, and she and Frederick went still, waiting again for the bomb to fall.

As far as Isabeau was concerned, this was one of the worst parts – the awful waiting, knowing that any second you could be snuffed out by a bomb.

The impact sounded a street over, and Frederick reacted immediately, pulling Isabeau down the side of their house to where the bomb shelter was tucked against the fence. The metal walls were bolstered by sandbags, and two small Union flags defiantly flew on either side of the door.

Inside, Mary would be sheltering with Oliver, and the three older Brown children, Cyril, Amy, and Eileen.

"Mr. Brown, stop," Isabeau said, pulling her hand free.

"It'll be a bit cramped but there's room for you too. I'm not leaving you out here while those German bastards are raining down hell," he said.

"I appreciate it, but I'll be fine. There are people out here who need my help."

He gazed back at her, his face torn. Even though he knew that she'd helped save so many lives since the bombs started falling, part of him still saw her as a woman that needed protection.

Isabeau gestured to the shelter behind him. "Your family needs you. Go to them."

Frederick didn't look happy about it, but he nodded. Much as he wanted to help Isabeau, his family came first.

"You should get a bloody medal when this all over," he said, moving to the shelter's doorway.

Isabeau got a quick glimpse at the rest of the family – Mary with Oliver sitting in her lap, the other three children arranged around her – and then Frederick went inside and dragged a sheet of corrugated metal across the doorway.

A medal would be nice, but Isabeau didn't need recognition. She helped people because they needed it, because she could, and when they didn't need her anymore, she would fade back into the shadows and hope that another war didn't break out.

She walked away from the Brown house, feeling the heat on her face from the nearby fires, listening to the droning buzz of passing planes and the whistle of falling bombs, and the faint sounds of people shouting to each other as they coordinated efforts to save what they could.

Halfway down the street, she stopped when the whistle of a bomb went silent. It sounded so close . . .

The impact came from behind her, almost knocking her off her feet.

She spun around, dread like ice in her veins.

The bomb had made an almost direct hit on the Browns' shelter, blasting their brick wall to pieces, turning their small garden into a smoking crater.

Isabeau opened her mouth but no sound came out.

Bomb shelters were supposed to be safe. She knew that sometimes they weren't, that sometimes the bombs still blew those shelters to pieces, along with everyone who'd hidden inside, but she'd never seen it happen, and all she could think about was that last glimpse she'd had of the Brown family before Frederick sealed them in.

She raced up the road to the ruin of their garden. The shelter had collapsed, half-buried beneath brick and rubble, but Isabeau's mind was on the woman and her baby from the night before.

They had survived – it was possible that the Browns had too.

"Hello?" she yelled. "Can anyone hear me?"

Silence.

She started to dig through the rubble. Sharp edges sliced her fingers, and several fingernails tore clean off as she scrabbled in the dirt, but she had to keep going because she was sure she'd just heard a faint moan.

"Mr. Brown? Frederick?" she cried.

She dug faster, her bloody fingers slipping over chunks of debris, until she was able to clear a section of corrugated metal that had once been either the roof or the wall of the shelter.

"Can anyone hear me?" she called again.

Something scraped against the sheet of metal from the other side. "We're here," Frederick shouted.

Isabeau dug through the dirt until she found the edge of the metal sheet, then she braced herself and lifted.

Frederick was crouched beneath it, shielding his family as best he could.

Isabeau assessed them all with a single look. Mary was unconscious, her face pale, Cyril was clutching what looked like a broken arm to his chest, and blood was spreading across Amy's dress from an injury that Isabeau couldn't see.

"Are you hurt?" she said to Frederick.

He didn't look it, but that didn't mean he wasn't suffering from internal damage.

He shook his head. His eyes were glazed with shock and he didn't seem to notice that Isabeau was holding up an entire section of the bomb shelter by herself.

"You need to get out of there," she said.

She couldn't let go of the metal sheet to help them, but the blast site was precarious enough already, and she was afraid that if she flung the sheet away like she'd done with that wall yesterday, then she might make things worse.

Frederick sprang into action. He helped Amy out first, then Eileen and Oliver.

"Where are you bleeding from?" Isabeau asked Amy.

The little girl pulled down the shoulder of her dress to show Isabeau the long gash running beneath her collarbone. It didn't look life-threatening.

Mary regained consciousness as Frederick lifted her out of the ruins of their shelter, and put a shaking hand to her head.

"What happened?" she gasped.

"You were very, very lucky," Isabeau told her. "Move back."

Still holding his wife in his arms, Frederick ushered his children out of the way, and when everyone was at a safe distance, Isabeau let the section of shelter crash back to the ground.

She wiped her bloody, filthy hands on her shirt.

The Brown family stared at her, finally starting to register that she'd just done something a normal human shouldn't be able to. Little Oliver started to cry. He didn't know that Isabeau had done anything out of the ordinary, but the terror of their near miss had just caught up to him.

"Put me down," Mary said, and Frederick did.

She picked up her youngest son and soothed him, rocking him from side to side.

"You need to get to a hospital. Are you alright to drive?" Isabeau said. Taking their own car would be quicker than waiting for an ambulance.

Frederick nodded. "I'll get the keys." He started towards the house, his family trailing after him, then he paused and looked back at Isabeau. "I don't know how you managed this, but thank you. You saved our –"

That was when the second bomb fell.

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