Ludovic's eyes snapped open.

The fog had gone, and he could move again. Immediately he put a hand to his throat. The blood was drying, sticky in patches, but the wound was gone.

Movement rustled behind him and he turned to see the man from the carriage standing there. His hands were pushed deep into the pockets of his coat, and his face was expressionless. There was no sign of red eyes or fangs now; he just looked like an ordinary man again.

"What happened?" Ludovic croaked.

His mouth tasted horribly of blood, and his stomach turned over. He spat red onto the leaves.

"You died," the man told him, his voice as neutral as his face. "And then you came back."

"What do you mean?" Ludovic looked around, half-expecting to see his friends picking themselves off, their wounds healed like his had done. But none of them moved. There was no sign of Jehanne's body, and a bolt of terror lanced through him.

"Where is she?" he cried, scrambling to his feet.

"I buried her in the woods," the man told him.

"My friends . . ." Ludovic mumbled, sitting back down on the ground, trying to wrap his brain around what was happening.

A chill note crept into the man's voice. "If you want them buried you'll have to do it yourself. They're not my responsibility."

"Your wife killed them," Ludovic said.

In a flash the man was crouching in front of him, his eyes sparking with anger. "That was an accident. She woke up rabid – it wasn't her fault," he snapped.

"Rabid?" Ludovic repeated.

The man passed a hand over his face, suddenly looking very tired. "I suppose I should start from the beginning."

He told Ludovic about vampires.

He told him how he'd been born a hundred and sixty years ago, and had been made into a vampire when he was twenty-nine. Two years ago he'd met and fallen in love with Jehanne. Most vampires hid what they were from the world, but he'd trusted Jehanne with his greatest secret, and she still loved him. They were married within a month. But Jehanne started to want what he had – immortality. She couldn't bear the thought that she'd grow old while he never would, and finally, a day ago, he'd agreed to turn her. She should have woken up as a vampire. Instead she'd woken up as a rabid, and there was no saving someone when they'd gone that far. The only thing to do was put Jehanne out of her misery, which is what her husband had done.

Then he'd taken pity on Ludovic and turned him into a vampire too.

"You couldn't save my friends?" Ludovic asked, looking again at the bloody bodies.

"They were already dead." The man's face hardened. "I wouldn't have saved them even if I could. They weren't good people."

Ludovic wanted to argue with that, but he couldn't. Much as he considered them his friends, he wasn't blind to the things they'd been capable of. He knew there was blood on their hands.

"And I am?" Ludovic asked.

The other man coolly regarded him. "I suppose that's up to you. I've given you a second chance and I hope you'll make good use of it." He straightened up, brushing leaves from the hem of his coat. It seemed pointless considering he was covered in blood.

"So what happens now?" Ludovic said.

The man shrugged. "Go and live your life."

"But . . . I don't know how. I don't know how to be a vampire."

Another shrug. "You came through the turn remarkably quickly. At least your friends' deaths weren't completely in vain."

"What?"

The man gave him an inscrutable look. "You may have turned quicker than any vampire I've known, but you still needed blood to help you through it." He gestured carelessly towards the bodies, scattered around the carriage. "It's a good thing so much of it was available."

Ludovic felt sick. "I've been drinking my friends' blood?"

"You're a vampire now. Drinking blood is crucial to your survival, so you'd better get used to it."

"But –"

"There is no but. If you and your friends hadn't attacked us then none of you would have died. My wife would still have woken up rabid, but I'd have been able to kill her with dignity. You helped deny her that. I could have let you die. I didn't, but do not mistake that for any affection on my part. I pitied you, that's all. I'm not about to take you under my wing. You're on your own."

"Will you at least tell me your name?" Ludovic asked, stalling for time, because as soon as this strange vampire left, Ludovic would be on his own and he had no idea how to handle that.

The man stared back at him, remote and cold. "No," he said.

"I'm afraid," Ludovic whispered.

If he was human, he'd have picked himself up and carried on. But his entire world had changed. This man and his wife had broken it into pieces, and now Ludovic was floundering in the wreckage, trying to make sense of it all.

There was no pity in the man's eyes. "That's something you'll have to learn to live with. Stay out of the sun or you'll burn up."

Ludovic didn't understand why the man had saved him only to turn him away now, but it was clear that nothing would change his mind.

"Wait," he said, as the man started to walk away, in the opposite direction of his carriage. "Will I ever see you again?"

The man didn't turn around. "I highly doubt it."

Ludovic watched him stride into the woods. His eyesight was so much sharper now than it had been as a human, and it look a while before the man fully disappeared into the shadows. Then Ludovic was well and truly alone.

For the longest while he sat there, trying to sort through the tangle in his head.

Then he slowly climbed to his feet. Dried blood cracked on his skin, and he stooped to pick up handfuls of damp leaves, scrubbing them over his face and neck. It made little difference.

All he could smell was blood, the thick, rank stench of it. Only it didn't smell rank to him anymore. Closing his eyes, he swallowed deeply. He had had no control over the fact that he'd drunk human blood, he had no memory of it, and he couldn't change it. Sooner or later the emotional weight of what had happened here tonight would hit him, and he'd crumble, but that couldn't happen yet.

His friends were dead, but they still needed him.

Even for a vampire, digging a grave with nothing more than his bare hands wasn't easy, especially one big enough to hold four bodies. The man's warning was fresh in his mind – he would need to find shelter before the sun came up.

He carried his dead friends over one at a time. Apparently, as a vampire he had strength that far surpassed his human body, but carrying more than one body at a time felt wrong, like they were luggage rather than people.

After he'd laid them in the grave, Ludovic wondered if he should say a few words to mark their passing. But he couldn't think of a single thing to say.

He'd died and come back.

They'd died and stayed dead.

He studied the rings that he'd taken from Benoit. The vampire hadn't asked for them back – maybe he'd forgotten they'd even been stolen. Ludovic considered tossing them into the grave as a farewell to the men who'd taken him in when he had nothing and nowhere to go, but he had no idea where he'd go next. He needed money, which meant he couldn't give up the rings. Reluctantly he slipped them into his pocket.

Night was starting to fade into dawn by the time he finished filling in the grave, and covered it over with autumn leaves. There was nothing he could do about the horses or the carriage, but he didn't want anyone finding the grave. His friends didn't have any families, no one to miss then, and it was better that they weren't disturbed again. Let them sleep here in the woods, below the earth, unremembered by anyone but Ludovic.

He left the carriage driver where he'd fallen. If the man had a family, it was better that someone found his body and gave his loved ones closure.

Ludovic looked at the horizon, where morning light was just starting to brush the sky. He was miles away from the nearest village – no chance of getting there before the sun fully rose. The best shelter would be the carriage itself, but he couldn't bring himself to stay there. Besides, he didn't want to risk anyone finding him.

He wasn't rabid like Jehanne had been, but it would take him time to come to terms with what he now was, and being around humans felt like too much of a risk.

As he stood over the grave, hidden to everyone but him, he recalled the story that Gustave had told him, about all those men dying, decades ago in Gascony, and wondered if perhaps they too had fallen afoul of a vampire.

Maybe one day, thieves on the road would speak of this night in the same way, telling the story of another gang who had picked on the wrong carriage and not lived to tell the tale.

Ludovic went to the carriage and tore down the black curtains that had obscured the windows. How far had Jehanne and her husband come? The curtains suggested that they'd set out on their journey when it was still daylight – had they been close to their destination when Gustave had intercepted them?

Ludovic would never get answers to these questions, and he had more important things to worry about.

Wrapping one curtain around his shoulders and using the other to shield his head and face, he headed into the woods where he would hunker down in a dark, safe place until night fell again.

Then he'd have to start the real process of learning to be a vampire.

3/3

On Friday, we're going to see what Isabeau's been up to :)