France, 1941

Ludovic's boots sunk into the snow, and wind as sharp as a knife whipped his hair off his face.

The midnight sky was heavy with cloud, not a star to be seen, and white flakes still drifted through the sky, settling on the small village huddled at the foot of the hill he was standing on.

His heart felt like a lump of stone in his chest, but there was no running away this time.

The moment he'd heard the rumours about a demon preying on rural villagers, a demon who took the shape of a beautiful young woman with flame-red hair, he knew that it was Elise.

He knew that this time he had to stop her.

Ludovic made his way down the hill and into the village.

Animals in their pens eyed him curiously as he passed, but nothing stirred in any of the houses. Lifting his head, he scented the air. Blood – lots of it. He followed the smell, moving silently through the snow, tracking it to a small house that was as still and dark as the others. But when Ludovic strained his ears, he caught a whisper of movement from inside.

The door swung open at his touch.

Inside, the house was pitch-dark, no candles or moonlight to cut through the shadows, but Ludovic' vampire eyes didn't need the light.

He found Elise in the bedroom, crouching over a slumped shape on the floor. Her head jerked up as he came in, lips twisted in a feral snarl, eyes burning like hot coals, red as blood.

"Ludovic," she said, and he almost cringed at the sound of her voice.

Once he'd loved the way she said his name. Now it seemed a cruel mockery of what they'd shared.

"You have to stop this, Elise," he said.

She straightened up, dropping her victim. She hadn't carefully bitten him like vampires should; instead she'd ripped into his throat with her fangs. Blood smeared her face and pooled across the floor.

Ludovic was older and stronger than Elise, but he recoiled from her then, a bolt of fear stabbing into his chest as his mind flashed back to the night he'd become a vampire. He'd never forgotten the utter terror he'd felt facing down Jehanne, soaked as she was in his friends' blood, or the red-hot pain as she tore at his neck like a wild animal.

"You never did understand being a vampire," Elise said, licking blood off her fingers.

"Maybe not, but I refuse to accept that it is about this. It's not about killing people."

Elise's face darkened, glittering with violence. There was nothing left of the woman he had fallen in love with, only a kind of madness, a deep bloodlust that would never be quenched. Maybe she wasn't like Jehanne yet, maybe she never would be that out of control, but she was still too dangerous. Too many lives had already been lost.

"Are you going to stop me, Ludovic?" she said, low and deadly.

Ludovic gazed back at her. He hadn't gone after her last time because he hadn't been able to bring himself to hurt her, even as Claudine's body was cooling in his bed. But that self-indulgence had cost more lives. He had turned her, he had left her to run wild – the blood of her kills was as much on his hands as it was hers. This was his responsibility, and he couldn't hide from it anymore.

"Yes, Elise," he said, resolve hardening inside him. "I'm going to stop you."

She leaped at him as the last word left his mouth, and they crashed against the wall, Elise snarling like a rabid dog. Ludovic threw her off. She landed in a crouch, fire in her eyes.

"Is this how it ends, husband?" she spat.

"It didn't have to be like this," Ludovic shouted.

She attacked again, but Ludovic was ready this time; he grabbed her upper arms, lifted her off her feet, and threw her through the window. When he'd walked into this village, it had been with a grim sense of resignation at what he'd been about to do. He hadn't been angry.

Now suddenly he was.

Elise had been a good person once, and he didn't know why she had changed, whether the vampire had given her a predatory cruelty she'd never had before, or whether it had always been there and he just hadn't realised it. But there was no excuse for slaughtering people. Vampires didn't need to kill to feed – she did it because she enjoyed it.

He climbed through the window.

Elise had vanished, leaving only the indent of her body in the snow and a few dark drops of blood, but instinct told Ludovic that she was close. She wouldn't run from him now.

Movement whispered behind him and he spun around as Elise leaped from the roof. Her feet drove into his chest, and he felt the hot flare of pain as a rib snapped. They fell into the snow together, and Elise raked her nails across his face, splitting skin. He barely even felt it. Rage turned his blood to fire and he grabbed her throat, forcing her head up. She took another swipe at his face but her arms weren't long enough. Ludovic threw her back, and she slammed into the house behind her. The blood on her face had smeared across his hand; he wiped it on his shirt. But he swore he could still feel it, wet on his skin, a physical reminder that all this blood had been shed because of him. Because he had created a monster. Because he hadn't been strong enough to stop her.

Elise climbed to his feet, and maybe it was his imagination but he thought he saw a flicker of something in her eyes – sorrow? regret? – and the heat of his rage died down.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "This is never how I imagined things would end, and I would give anything for them to be different. But they aren't."

Elsie tried to move, but he shoved her back against the wall, pinning her there with one hand while groping around the broken window frame with the other.

Please, he thought. He wanted it to be as quick as possible for his wife.

There. His fingers closed around a sharp piece of wood, jutting upwards. He wrenched it free, splinters digging into his skin and gazed down at Elise one more time, trying to remember the woman she had been, the curious, bright-eyed, persistent woman that he had met in the river, and not what she had become, the mad-eyed monster writhing and snarling in his grasp.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

Then he drove the piece of wood into her chest.

Elise's eyes flew wide, a strangled moan slipping between bloodied lips. "Ludovic," she whispered, and tried to raise one hand – to stroke his face or claw his eyes out, he didn't know.

He pushed down on the wooden stake, driving it deeper into her heart, until Elise gave a final shudder and went still, the vampire life that Ludovic had given her fading from her eyes. He closed her eyelids, his hand lingering on the face that he had loved so much.

Then he realised he wasn't alone.

Villagers had formed a loose semicircle around him, some of them armed with knives or farm tools.

"You don't need those. She's dead – she won't hurt anyone else," Ludovic said.

No one lowered their weapons, and then Ludovic understood – they weren't here for Elise. They were here for him. She was the demon who had stalked them in the night, and Ludovic had killed her to protect them, but they knew that he wasn't human either, and that was all that mattered. His eyes were red, like Elise's had been. He had incredible strength, like she had done. He supposed he couldn't blame them for not trusting him, but it still stung.

The villagers started to close in, their faces frightened but determined, weapons at the ready. Ludovic scooped Elise's body into his arms; no matter what she'd done, he would not leave her here. Then he ran.

He buried Elise two miles from the village, in a patch of wild woodland where the trees grew so close together that their leaves all but blocked out the sky. No vampire could stay out in the sun for too long – if he left Elise's body out during the day, it would soon burn up. But he wanted to give her the burial that she would have had as a human.

He kissed her forehead before placing her in the ground.

After killing that monk, he had gone into hiding, choosing a hermetic way of life to keep other people safe. Elise was the only reason he'd ventured away from that, and the result had been pain and misery and death.

Perhaps it was time to become a hermit again.

It was safer for everyone that way.

4/4

On Friday we're going to see what Gideon's been getting up to :)