Paris, 1794

When the mob had finally come for him, Edmond Dantès hadn't fought them. He'd let them drag him from his house, and he hadn't raised a finger against them, even when they shoved him and kicked him and spat on him.

Now, he was sitting on the floor of a cell in the Conciergerie, once a medieval royal palace, now considered the most fearsome prison in Paris, where aristocrats and anyone else accused of being an enemy of the Revolution awaited the day they would be taken to the guillotine.

Some wealthier prisoners bought their way into better cells, so they could at least have some comfort in their final days.

Edmond did not.

His cell was a gloomy, grimy little thing, shared with five other people and more rats than he could count. The floor was laid with damp straw that reeked of human sewage, and someone was always crying.

Closing his eyes, Edmond rested his head on the stone wall behind him.

He'd been a peasant once. It was so long ago, and he'd come so far since then, that he'd almost forgotten, and he felt that shame like a blast of fire.

More than anyone else in the aristocracy, he knew what it felt like to have nothing. He knew how it felt to be homeless, to never know where the next meal was coming from, and he'd forgotten it all because he was rich now, because he could afford anything he'd ever wanted. He'd turned his back on everything he'd used to be, everything he'd used to know, on the people he once would have called his own.

He'd become blind to the suffering of the French peasants, and even when the Revolution arrived, even after the storming of the Bastille, even after the September Massacres, even after people were slaughtered in the streets, he'd still somehow thought it wouldn't happen to him.

It wasn't until the king and queen lost their heads that Edmond finally realised what was happening, and by then it was too late.

Now he was in prison, counting down the days until the guillotine would take his head.

He hadn't thought it would end like this.

On the other side of the cell, a middle-aged man in filthy rags suddenly vomited, and the stench of it added to the vile smell of shit and piss already saturating the corner.

Edmond desperately pitied the people imprisoned with him. He was a murderer – he deserved to be here. But these people weren't aristocrats.

What had started as a means of overthrowing a desperately unequal class system had become the Terror, in which anyone could accuse anyone of being a royalist or aristo sympathiser, and the accused would likely lose their head for it.

Unless they were massacred in the street first.

Edmond had lost track of how many days he'd been in here, and the thought of his death no longer filled him with anything but a grim resignation, but some nights, when he listened to the other prisoners sobbing in their sleep, when he heard people being moved to adjacent cells so they could begin their final journey to that terrible blade, he found himself thinking of Ysanne.

He hoped with everything he had that she had fled the city, that she was safe somewhere, away from all the death and horror.

If only he could have seen her once more.

Two days later it was time for him to leave the prison.

He'd barely moved from his corner of the cell the whole time, not even killing the rats when they scampered over him, and his legs almost buckled when he was roughly grabbed and hauled to his feet.

After days spent in the gloom of the cell, the sunlight was almost blinding when he was hauled out of the prison and into the waiting tumbrel, and Edmond closed his eyes against the glare. But he didn't keep them closed for long. If this was his final day, then he wanted to see the city that had been his home for so long. His stockings, breeches and shirt were filthy after days on that rancid straw, and he ached for fresh blood. He hadn't eaten so much as a rat since his arrest.

More prisoners were loaded into the tumbrel behind him, packed in like cattle. A second tumbrel stood behind them, ready for more prisoners. It would be a bloody day at Place de la Revolution.

Edmond pulled in a breath he didn't really need, tasting the freshness of the air after that stinking cell, but even out here the reek of human waste and human blood was relentless.

Horses' hooves clattered as they set off, leaving the Conciergerie behind, and Edmond tore his eyes away from the prison, looking instead at the wooden floor beneath his feet.

Something hard hit him on the back of the head, and Edmond whipped around. Small, ragged children with bare feet ran alongside the wagon, laughing and throwing rocks at the prisoners. Edmond's clothes were worse for wear after days in prison, but they still clearly marked him as an aristocrat, and the children focused their efforts on him the most. Another rock glanced off his cheek, splitting skin.

Edmond looked away.

Once, he might have bared his fangs at the children, frightening them away, but what was the point? He was about to have his head cut off.

All too soon they reached the square where the guillotine stood. The space was packed with people, cheering and laughing and baying for blood, and the man next to Edmond let out a whimper at the sight of a bloody head paraded on a pike.

A gleeful roar rose up as the tumbrels rattled into the square.

Edmond looked over the heads of the crowd, at that infamous blade, sitting on its wooden platform.

Suddenly, something inside him shifted.

Ever since his arrest, he'd been resigned to his fate, accepting that this was the end for him, and even thinking that he'd lived long enough anyway.

But when he looked up at the blade that had claimed so many thousands of lives, an icy bolt of fear lanced through Edmond. It was so long since he'd feared for his life like this, and the force of it almost made him reel. But there was something exhilarating about it too – the realisation that he didn't want to die.

He had so many regrets, and so much pain still to deal with, but he wanted to live.

Edmond backed away, shouldering his way through the other prisoners, but that only brought him to the other end of the tumbrel, and he quickly realised that was exactly where he didn't want to be.

Two pairs of hands grabbed him and hauled him out of the wagon, and the crowd cheered even louder, hurling insults.

Edmond's captors started dragging him towards that wooden platform, and for an awful moment he let them, because he was so frozen with fear and horror that he couldn't even think about fighting back.

Then raw survival instinct flared up, and suddenly Edmond knew that he would fight with everything he had to escape from this. Maybe the revolutionaries would overwhelm him anyway. Maybe he'd still lose his head or maybe the mob would butcher him, but he would not go down without a fight.

Edmond stopped.

His captors tried to haul him forward, but Edmond was too strong. He wrenched away from them, and when they tried to grab him again, he shoved them both against the platform.

More revolutionaries surged forward, and Edmond whirled to face them. Hundreds of people had gathered to watch the executions – maybe thousands – even a vampire couldn't fight them all.

Three men, bolder than the rest, charged at Edmond. He laid one out with a single punch; another grabbed his arm and Edmond hurled the man over his shoulder. The third got in a punch that rocked Edmond's head on his shoulders, and he responded by slamming the heel of his hand into the man's nose, knocking him flat.

Two more grabbed his arms, trying to twist them behind his back, and Edmond slammed their heads together. They dropped, senseless, to the ground.

But there were still so many closing in. Edmond made a desperate decision.

He raced up the wooden steps onto the guillotine's platform, and as the executioner turned to him, eyes wide with surprise, Edmond kicked the man off the platform. He fell into the crowd, and as people swarmed around him – either to help him, or perhaps not realising that he wasn't the prisoner they wanted dead – Edmond took a running leap off the platform.

He landed in the middle of the crowd, and they instinctively drew back from him, but that wouldn't last long. He took advantage of their surprise, and ploughed into them, fighting his way through with everything he had. If he could just get out of the square, he had a chance of losing his attackers in the alleys and backstreets.

Hands grabbed at him, tearing his clothes, but desperation fuelled him, and he fought with fists and feet and fangs, until there was a lull in the crowd, right at the edge of the square.

Edmond ran for it, and suddenly he was free of that blood-soaked place.

The revolutionaries came after him, screaming with fury, but Edmond was too fast. Fleet-footed as a cat, he vanished into the tangled streets of Paris.

He had no idea where he would go from here, but for the first time in such a long time, he was determined to live.