Portugal, 1760

Blood was everywhere.

It pooled around Isabeau Aguillon's feet, soaking into her shoes, clinging to the hem of her dress, cooling in thick stripes on her hands and face.

Her mouth was full of it.

She stared down at the bodies strewn around her, their staring eyes and gaping mouths, the taste of them on her tongue, the slashes in their flesh, like a wild animal had mauled them.

Then she sank to her knees among the blood and bodies and started to cry.

Isabeau's eyes snapped open.

There was no blood, no death, only her memories. It had been a while since she dreamed of that night, but where it used to wake her up, shaking in her bed, now it was something she grimly accepted.

Seventeen years had passed since the woman she loved, Beatriz Allende, had been murdered by the man that she rejected.

Seventeen years since Isabeau had killed Beatriz's murderers.

Seventeen years since she'd left Spain and found herself in Portugal.

She hadn't meant to settle in Spain, but falling in love with Beatriz had made it a home for her. She hadn't meant to settle in Portugal either. Somehow it had just . . . happened.

Losing Beatriz had ripped her heart from her chest, and even now, the pain of it was still so fresh, so raw – so much so that she sometimes couldn't believe it had really been almost two decades.

Sometimes she thought about what Beatriz would look like if she was alive today. She pictured how time might have rounded Beatriz's curves even more, how strands of grey might have started to shoot through her hair. Her smile wouldn't have changed though, nor her dimples, nor the shine in her eyes.

Isabeau missed her so much.

When she'd arrived in Portugal, her taste for travelling had waned, and she'd settled in a small village in the countryside, not so different from the village where Beatriz had once lived. Selling off everything that she'd stolen from the Galiano household had brought in enough money that Isabeau could have afforded a better home than the modest little place in the village, but all she wanted was a quiet life, somewhere she wouldn't be noticed.

Somewhere that she could deal with her grief and loss and heartbreak.

But she'd stayed too long.

Celeste had taught her that vampires could never linger too long in one place, or people would become suspicious of them, but Isabeau had been so lost in her own pain that she stopped heeding the lessons that Celeste had given her.

She had spent ten years in that village and, just as Celeste had warned, the locals had come to realise there was something . . . different about her. They'd become fearful and suspicious, and one night they'd gathered together to drive her out.

Isabeau would have gone peacefully, but a gang of villagers had had other ideas.

Six men had followed her into the countryside, armed and angry, believing there was something unholy about her, something that needed to die.

Isabeau could have run from them.

She could have fought them off without killing them.

But when she saw them gathering around her, brandishing cudgels and knives, all she'd been able to think of was Ulises Galiano and his friends, the men who'd murdered Beatriz.

All she could focus on was the rage boiling through her again, the hate and the blackness and the need to kill.

So she killed them.

They hadn't been evil, like Ulises and his friends. They'd been scared. They'd thought they were protecting their families from an unnatural monster, and Isabeau had slaughtered them for it.

She'd shown herself to be a monster, after all.

She never dreamed of the night that she'd killed Ulises. She never dreamed of the awful moment she'd found Beatriz's body, lying in a pool of blood.

But she did dream of the night she killed the Portuguese villagers that she'd peacefully coexisted with for a decade.

She dreamed of it because it shouldn't have happened, because guilt felt like a chain around her neck, because she had started to fear herself. Celeste had taught her how to control her strength, her speed, her thirst for blood. She had not taught her what to do when she started to fear being a vampire.

Isabeau rolled over in the tiny bed, shifting her attention from the stone ceiling to the stone walls of her room at the Santa Benvida convent. It was a far cry from her childhood home in France, or the house she'd shared with Celeste, Renee, and Jeanne, or even that little Spanish shack where Beatriz had died. But it had been Isabeau's home for the last six years, and she'd grown used to the austerity.

Someone knocked on the door, and Isabeau climbed out of bed to answer it.

Sister Carina stood on the other side, her hands tucked into the sleeves of her habit. She smiled at Isabeau, her olive skin folding into creases, and Isabeau smiled back.

After Isabeau had slaughtered the villagers, she'd fled from what she had done, heading away from the village and deep into rural Portugal, hoping she could avoid humans altogether while she tried to come to terms with what she'd done. Eventually, after months of living alone and surviving on animal blood, she had stumbled upon Santa Benvida, tucked away in the foothills of the Serra da Estrela mountain range.

The convent was like no life she'd ever known, and the quiet peace of it had called to her. Sister Carina, a kind, serene woman in her fifties, had welcomed Isabeau in, even though she knew nothing about her. Perhaps she, and the other fifteen nuns who lived here, thought it very strange that Isabeau couldn't go outside during the day, and that she never ate or drank in front of them, but they had accepted her nonetheless. Isabeau did her daily jobs at night, while the nuns slept, and then she sneaked away from the convent and stole out into the mountains where she'd learned to hunt wild animals, usually going after smaller prey like foxes and rabbits, and avoiding predators like wolves. Although she was confident that she could have taken a wolf down, it probably wouldn't be without incurring some damage to herself, and she didn't want to have to explain away torn or bloodied clothes to the nuns. They cared for her as one of their own, but that attitude would almost certainly change if they ever found out what she really was.

"You're late," Sister Carina said, and her tone was stern, but her eyes twinkled.

In human years she was more than twice than Isabeau's age.

But Isabeau had been born in 1705, which put her at fifty-five now – the same age, she estimated as Sister Carina herself.

"Forgive me," Isabeau said. "I had trouble sleeping."

"Bad dreams? One day you must tell me what's on your mind," said Sister Carina, her gaze sharpening.

No one at the convent pushed Isabeau to tell her story. They only knew her as a young woman who'd suffered something, and perhaps they thought she was too traumatised to talk about it. But sometimes Isabeau caught Sister Carina looking at her with an appraising, curious gleam in her eyes. Sister Carina did want to know what Isabeau's story was, and of course Isabeau couldn't tell her. It would have been easy enough to lie, but for now she preferred to simply not talk about it.

Isabeau dressed in her own habit, and followed Sister Carina out into the courtyard. The convent gazed down at them, the white walls gleaming under the moonlight, shadows pooling between the pillars of the colonnade that ran around the building. A small fire smouldered in a corner of the courtyard, and the air smelled of smoke and meat.

"Sausages?" Isabeau guessed.

"Sausages," Sister Carina confirmed.

Before Isabeau had come, smoking sausages was done during the day, over indoor fireplaces. Now, it was done at night, over an outside fire. Isabeau preferred to work outside when she could – she liked sitting under the stars, watching the way they glittered across the vast expanse of velvet-dark sky, and thinking about the life she'd lived, and what else the world had planned for her.

Sister Carina rested a warm hand on Isabeau's shoulder. "We are always here for you, if ever you feel ready to talk," she said.

"I know," Isabeau said.

She thought she saw a flicker of disappointment in the nun's eyes. Sister Carina might not push Isabeau to explain what had driven her to the convent, but maybe she felt like Isabeau's refusal to talk was a sign that she didn't fully trust the sisters of Santa Benvida and, not for the first time, Isabeau felt a pang of sadness.

Her life here was not remarkable, but it was happy, and it pained her to remember that she could not stay forever. Perhaps she could not even stay for much longer. The nuns might overlook what they considered her strange habits of eating in private – or so they thought – and only working at night, but even they would not overlook the usual problems that vampires faced when it came to living among humans – the lack of aging, for example.

At some point, Isabeau would have to do what she always did, and move on.

She understood now why Celeste had reacted badly to Isabeau leaving. Celeste knew how hard a vampire's life could be. She understood how it felt to always have to move from place to place, unable to ever truly put down roots, how it felt to always have to say goodbye to people. That was why she had turned Renee and Jeanne, so she would have two women – both friends and lovers – who would never leave her. It was why she'd turned Isabeau too, only Isabeau had left her.

Sister Carina patted Isabeau's shoulder again, then she went back inside, leaving Isabeau with her work.

Isabeau sat in front of the fire. Smoking sausages took several hours, and once she would have found the process desperately boring. Now she relished the quiet repetition of it, night after night after night.

But tonight was different.

Isabeau hadn't been sitting there for long when she caught a sound – footfalls approaching the convent. Instinct prickled.

Santa Benvida was isolated enough that the building wasn't locked at night, and that hadn't proved a problem in all the years that Isabeau had lived here. The nearest town was miles away. No one came here at night.

Four men walked into the courtyard. They were only young, barely into their twenties, and at first they seemed nervous, whispering among themselves and glancing at the white walls that surrounded them as if they were sneaking into some forbidden space. Their demeanour changed when they saw Isabeau. Shoulders straightened, chests puffed out, and heads lifted high, like they were all trying to make themselves appear physically bigger.

"Good evening," said the man in the lead, but it didn't quite sound sincere. There was something vaguely mocking in his tone, and it made Isabeau bristle.

She stood up, facing them.

"Can I help you?" she said.

It was a simple enough question, but one of the men started sniggering and shooting little looks at his friends.

"Are you lost?" Isabeau tried.

The sniggering man looked her up and down. "No, I think we're exactly where we want to be."

Isabeau shot him a cold glare. "I think you should leave," she said.

"No, don't be like that," protested the leader of the little gang. "Look." He dug in his pocket and pulled out a handful of gold escudo. "We have money to pay."

"Pay for what?" Isabeau was thoroughly confused.

The man's face broke into a lascivious smile. "You, of course."

There was a long pause.

"What's your name?" Isabeau asked.

"Afonso."

The other three introduced themselves as Jorge, Olavo, and Edu, and they seemed civil enough, but Isabeau's instincts didn't settle. There was something in the air, a strange sense of excitement and anticipation, and Isabeau got the feeling that that could quickly turn ugly.

"Afonso, I think you are perhaps confused. Nobody here is for sale."

He frowned. "This is the Santa Benvida convent, isn't it?"

"It is."

"Then stop playing coy," Jorge butted in, glaring at Isabeau. "We told you we have money, so name your price."

Finally Isabeau understood.

She had heard Sister Carina talk of this in hushed tones with some of the older nuns, but it wasn't something they'd ever directly addressed with the others, and Isabeau probably would never have known if not for her superhuman hearing.

Portugal was home to many convents, but not all of them were like Santa Benvida. Behind cloistered walls, so many other convents were nothing more than whorehouses, visited by the nobility and purportedly even the king himself, where loose habits concealed illegitimate pregnancies, and orgies were frequent.

If Santa Benvida had been such a place, Isabeau would not have stayed – not because whorehouses were shocking or distasteful to her, but because they couldn't offer the quiet life that she wanted.

But this was a convent in the truer sense, though Afonso and his friends didn't seem to understand that.

"No one here is for sale," Isabeau repeated.

The men looked at each other, confused, and then Jorge snorted.

"We all know what happens here," he said.

"Not here."

Afonso looked genuinely bewildered. "But we've come all this way, and our friends . . . they'll be here soon." He gestured behind him.

As soon as the words had left his mouth, Isabeau heard the sound of laughter, faint, but getting nearer.

"Then you'll have to tell them to leave," she said.

Another four men swaggered into the courtyard, laughing and jostling each other, bringing with them the strong smell of wine.

"Getting her warmed up for us, are you?" one of them called when he saw Isabeau.

"Get. Out," Isabeau said.

Afonso turned to his friends. "There's been a mistake, this isn't the right place."

Olavo made an angry noise. "We don't have time to go anywhere else, so this will have to be the right place."

"It isn't," Isabeau told him.

"We've got money enough to make it the right place," he insisted, moving towards her.

Isabeau's skin crawled.

Olavo smiled at her, but it was cruel and oily, the smile of a young man used to getting exactly what he wanted, and suddenly Isabeau wasn't standing in the courtyard of a remote Portuguese convent. She was standing in the country home of a spoiled Spanish noble, the smell of Beatriz's blood in her nose, the men who had murdered her love sniggering around her.

Anger roared to life in her chest.

Her hands curled into fists.

"The answer is no. It is going to stay no, regardless of how much money you have, or what you want," she said.

Olavo looked taken aback, and though he looked nothing like Ulises Galiano, in that moment his expression was exactly like Ulises's had been on the night Isabeau killed him – the stunned look of an arrogant, spoiled boy who couldn't comprehend that money really couldn't buy anything.

Then his expression darkened. "You can't talk to me like that."

"It appears I just did."

Olavo made a grab for her arm, and Isabeau deftly avoided him, grabbing his own arm instead and shoving him away. He stumbled, almost into the fire, his feet kicking up sprays of cinders, and fresh flames sparked to life. Olavo swore, his scowl made even uglier by the pattern of shadows on his face, then he kicked the fire, sending sparks and embers flying at Isabeau's face. Instinctively she put up an arm to shield her face. Hands roughly gripped her wrists, wrenching them down, and Olavo's face danced in her vision as she blinked away bright spots from the sudden flare of the fire.

"Maybe someone needs to teach you a lesson," he said, his breath hot on her face.

Isabeau broke his grip. Her gums were aching, and she gritted her teeth, trying to keep her fangs from sliding out. Not again. Not another slaughter at her hands.

She pushed Olavo away, hard enough that he fell to the ground and turned to his friends. Only three of them were left now, including Afonso, and for a shining moment, Isabeau thought that maybe the other young men had thought better of this and had simply left.

Then a scream rang out from inside the convent.

Olavo's friends hadn't left.

They'd taken advantage of the distraction and gone after the nuns.

Jorge came into the courtyard, dragging Sister Dores behind him. One of the youngest nuns in the convent, and built as frail as a baby bird, she sobbed helplessly in Jorge's hands.

Isabeau's anger reached boiling point.

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