France, 1916

Ludovic de Vauban opened his eyes to find a rat perched on his chest, black eyes staring at him, sharp yellow teeth latched onto his tunic.

When he'd first arrived in the trenches, the other soldiers had told him stories of rats that grew as big as cats. He was starting to believe them.

With lightning speed, he grabbed the rat and snapped its spine, killing it, then he sank his fangs into its hairy body and drank. He'd fed on rats in the past, long before going to war, but trench rats didn't taste the same as the wild rats he'd fed on when he was living in isolation in France. These rats gorged themselves on the dead, and their blood left a foul taste in Ludovic's mouth, and it was never enough to satisfy him, but he had no choice.

Technically he could drink from the dogs in the trenches, but they were part of the war effort, same as Ludovic himself. Dogs carried messages between trenches. They were watchdogs. They brought medical supplies to injured men. Ludovic would never do anything to jeopardise that.

He dropped the rat's body, and lifted the corner of his overcoat, peering out at the muddy hellhole that was the Western Front. The sun was setting, turning the sky a bloody red, and Ludovic looked away. He'd seen so much death in this place.

Ludovic sat up, and bundled his coat in his lap. He'd only managed a few hours sleep and they hadn't been comfortable – lying on a dry sandbag with his coat over his head like a tent, but it was the best he'd ever get in this place.

Nearby, three soldiers were playing cards; one of them laughed, and it lifted Ludovic's tired heart. Even here, in this muddy, bloody warzone, people still managed to find small pieces of happiness.

"De Vauban, come join us," one of them called.

Ludovic smiled and shook his head.

In the trenches, soldiers treated each other as brothers, but Ludovic had struggled with that from the start. The other soldiers were human. They were so much more fragile than him. When he'd first come, it had been alongside so many young men – boys, really – who thought they were in for an adventure, who thought they'd shoot some Germans, get some glory, and then return home. Most of them were dead now. Sometimes he saw their faces in his dreams.

Now he was wary about becoming too friendly with the other soldiers because, inevitably, they would die too. It was easier to cope with if he didn't know them that well.

Ludovic stood up and stretched, then ran a hand over his head. His short hair still felt unfamiliar, but there was no choice in the trenches, not with constant infestations of lice. Vampire hair grew much more slowly than human hair – it would be years until it was long enough to tie back in the style that he liked.

Assuming that he got out of this war in one piece, of course.

Vampires were a lot harder to kill than humans, but they could still be killed.

The night passed uneventfully, and Ludovic managed to catch three more rats to keep him going, sucking down their rank blood in the shadows. When morning came, there were trench duties to attend to – checking that none of the sandbags needed refilling or restacking, or that any barbed wire needed fixing, and the always delightful task of emptying the latrines.

It wasn't until all duties were taken care of, that Ludovic could sleep again. He couldn't find a spare sandbag this time, so he crawled into one of the shallow dugouts set in the trench walls and pulled his coat over his head.

Soldiers worked during the night and slept during the day, but only after morning duties were finished, and Ludovic wondered how much sleep he'd actually manage before it was time to get up again. It never seemed like enough.

He was jerked awake by the sound of a gong, and for the span of a heartbeat, he was disoriented, then his blood ran cold.

He knew that sound.

Ludovic had never fought in a war before this one, but he'd lived long enough to know that humans were horribly good at finding new and inventive ways to slaughter each other, and as far as he was concerned, gas attacks were the worst way.

He flung off his coat and scrambled to his feet.

The lethal gases used by German soldiers couldn't kill him, but he'd seen the devastation they wreaked on the humans around him. No one should have to suffer that.

A sudden explosion rocked the trench, and the next thing Ludovic knew, he was lying on the duckboards that lined the ground, his ears ringing. He tried to push himself to his feet, and stabbing pain shot through his right leg. A long shard of shell shrapnel protruded just above his knee, and his breeches were already soaked with blood.

Another soldier lay nearby, and his face . . . his face was gone. There was nothing left but ragged meat and shards of bone.

Ludovic staggered away, trying to put pressure on his wound with one hand, holding tight to his rifle with the other. Someone was shouting his name, but he couldn't hear properly.

Another shell smashed into the trench, hitting the supplies of tinned beef that fed the soldiers. Wet meat splattered Ludovic's face and he didn't know if it was beef or pieces of soldiers.

He tried to orient himself, tried to will the ringing from his ears, and then something slammed into him from behind, knocking him to the ground. A hard body covered him, shielding him as another shell ripped into the trench wall, blasting sandbags apart.

The body rolled off him, the soldier who'd tackled him coming up into a graceful crouch.

"Are you alright?" he asked. His gaze fell to Ludovic's wounded leg. "Merde," he hissed.

Before Ludovic could protest, the other soldier had his hands under Ludovic's arms, and was dragging him to the meagre shelter of a dugout.

"You need to put your gas mask on," he said.

But the soldier himself wasn't wearing one, and as Ludovic stared at him, at the short black hair and sharp cheekbones in a face streaked with mud, he suddenly realised something.

The soldier had no heartbeat.

"You're a vampire," Ludovic blurted.

The soldier froze. He looked at Ludovic with new eyes, tilting his head slightly as he came to the same realisation that Ludovic had.

The trenches shuddered under another bombardment, the air split with the ugly sound of machine-gun fire, and clods of earth rained down around them.

"Can you walk?" the soldier asked.

He held out a hand and Ludovic took it, testing his weight.

"Yes," he said.

"Good. Let's move."

"I'm Ludovic," he said as they emerged from the dugout.

Maybe this wasn't the time for introductions, but this soldier was the first vampire Ludovic had seen in a long time, and there was no guarantee either of them would survive this attack. He had to at least know the man's name.

The soldier glanced back at him. "Edmond," he said.

The bombardment continued as they made their way through the trench, the world shuddering and shaking around them, the air thick with the smell of blasted earth and blasted bodies.

A soldier was sprawled across the ground in front of them, and Edmond stooped over him, searching for signs of life. He shook his head. Ludovic couldn't even see who it was beneath the gas mask.

A short distance ahead, a trench wall had collapsed, the earth spilling across the duckboards. A hand poked up from that earth, fingers feebly twitching.

"Help me," Ludovic said to Edmond, limping over to the buried soldier.

His leg screamed with pain, but he ignored it. It wouldn't kill him, and that soldier needed help now.

Using their hands, Edmond and Ludovic dug through the mounds of earth until they were rewarded by a ragged gasp as the soldier sucked in a breath of air. Edmond hauled him to his feet.

"Are you hurt?" he said, scanning the soldier for injuries.

The soldier blinked back at him, his eyes dazed. He was so young, barely old enough to shave.

"Are you hurt?" Edmond repeated, and the soldier jerkily shook his head.

"I don't think so."

"Put your gas mask on and run," Edmond ordered.

He didn't seem to hear the shuffle of movement above their heads – maybe he was too busy focusing on the boy – but Ludovic heard it.

"Edmond," he shouted as soldiers in German uniforms leaped into the trench.

The boy was still fumbling with his gas mask – too slow to react to the danger. A bayonet took him through the chest and he collapsed, choking on his own blood. The soldier who'd killed him was still pulling his bayonet free when Edmond broke his neck.

Another soldier lunged at Ludovic, and normally he could easily have dodged, but he'd forgotten his damn leg; as he put his full weight on it, pain roared through him, and his knee buckled. He was still fast enough to avoid the blade that sliced at his face, but not fast enough to stop it from laying open his shoulder.

Ludovic snarled and punched him, smashing the German's nose, and as he reeled back, Ludovic clubbed him round the head with his rifle. Another enemy soldier took his place, and Ludovic stabbed him in the heart, driving him back against the trench wall.

A shell impacted somewhere nearby, shuddering the world, and everything was smoke and mud and blood. When it cleared, when Ludovic could see again, Edmond was on his hands and knees, blood streaming down his face.

Ludovic scrambled forward, putting his arm around Edmond and helping him up. Edmond sagged against him with a groan. Ludovic guided him over to a heap of sandbags, and crouched in front of him, gritting his teeth against the pain from his wounded leg, and the slash in his shoulder. He didn't even know how bad that was.

Edmond slumped against the packed-earth wall, eyes closed, but when Ludovic tried to examine the wound, he gave a soft growl of pain and his eyes flared open, glowing red.

It was probably shrapnel that had hit him, carving a deep slice across his head, but nothing was trapped in the wound, which saved Ludovic having to dig around to pull anything out. But Edmond was losing blood, fast, and Ludovic had already lost enough of his own.

There was only one thing he could do.

He limped back to the dead soldiers, crouched over one and peeled away the man's gas mask. Even though he didn't want to, he couldn't help looking at the man's face. The German was unremarkable, a bland, ordinary face just creeping past middle-age, a trickle of blood coming from his mouth. He wasn't the first soldier that Ludovic had killed, but he didn't normally see their faces. He didn't have to think about the families and the lives they'd left behind.

Ludovic dragged the dead man over to where Edmond sat, his eyes closed again.

He had the sudden fear that the head-wound was too much and Edmond had died, but Edmond's eyes flickered open when Ludovic dragged the dead soldier over.

"Come on," Ludovic said.

His shoulder was starting to throb, and the pain in his leg was red-hot, but he wouldn't feed until he knew that Edmond was alright. The other vampire had been willing to risk his life for Ludovic's – the least Ludovic could do was return the favour.

Edmond slid off the sandbag onto his knees and bent over the dead soldier. He sank his fangs into the soldier's neck and started to drink.

Retrieving his rifle, Ludovic stood guard, his eyes sweeping left and right, searching the trench for any sign of life. His leg hurt so much and he wanted to use his rifle as a crutch, to take the weight off the injury, but he didn't dare. Those Germans had been part of a raiding party, which meant that more could arrive any minute. Wounded as he was, he couldn't risk being caught off-guard.

A hand touched his shoulder. Edmond stood behind him, his eyes sharper and more focused now he'd fed.

"It's your turn. Sit," he said, indicating the sandbag.

Ludovic tried to limp back over, but his knee buckled again, and he almost went down, but Edmond held him up, supporting his weight as he led him over to the sandbag.

"This needs to come out," he said, his hand hovering over the shard of shrapnel still sticking out of Ludovic's leg.

"I know."

Edmond crouched, one hand on Ludovic's leg, the other on the shrapnel. "Ready?" he said.

Bracing himself, Ludovic nodded.

However bad it had felt going in, it was worse coming out. A half-snarl, half-scream lodged in his throat. Edmond threw the shrapnel to one side and grabbed Ludovic's hands, pressing them firmly against the wound to stem the blood flow.

The pain of it made white spots dance in Ludovic's eyes.

Edmond dragged another dead soldier over, hoisting the body up so Ludovic could reach it without moving. "Drink," he commanded.

It was the first human blood Ludovic had had in a long time, and he couldn't help a moan of relief. He drank and drank, and then he finally leaned back, feeling fresh strength flow through his body.

"Better?" Edmond asked.

Ludovic nodded.

"Good, because I can smell the gas coming in, and there are probably other soldiers who need our help."

Ludovic climbed to his feet, testing his leg. There was still a lingering ache – the wound hadn't quite finished knitting back together yet, but it soon would, and it wouldn't slow him down.

Side by side, the two vampires strode off into the shattered depths of the trench.

1/2