The world came back to Isabeau in pieces.
Her brain felt like it had been beaten with a hammer, and when she tried to move, a stabbing pain shot through her chest.
What had happened?
She'd been standing in the garden with the Brown family, and then . . .
And then . . .
She tried to move again, and rubble shifted beneath and around her, while dust and ash fell in clouds onto her face, filling her mouth and eyes with grit.
A bomb.
There had been another bomb.
The rubble she was lying in – that had been the Browns' house.
Isabeau lifted a hand, trying to paw the dirt out of her eyes, and that made her chest burst with pain again, until she cried out. Those would be broken ribs, then. Several fingers, too, by the looks of them.
Her head was a pulsing ball of pain.
One leg was sticky and wet with what must be blood.
"H-hello?" she croaked, her voice choked with dust.
No one answered her.
"Mr. Brown? Mary?"
Nothing.
Isabeau closed her eyes and tried to summon the strength to move, gritting her teeth against the pain of her broken ribs. Sharp edges dug into her back. She managed to lift her head, and let out an anguished sob.
Frederick Brown lay nearby. Falling debris must have struck his head – the side of his skull was caved in and bits of brain leaked out along with what looked like one of his eyes.
An arm lay near him, and Isabeau didn't know whose it was.
Mary was crumpled beside him, her body contorted into a horrible shape.
Further down, by her feet, lay some glistening chunks of bone and flesh that, judging from the red hair still attached to a strip of scalp, had once been Eileen, and beyond her lay Amy, almost torn in half from the impact of whatever had hit her. Cyril was sprawled across her legs, but his own legs lay a short distance away, sharp edges of bone protruding from shredded flesh.
And then there was Oliver.
Three-year-old Oliver, who'd just wanted to see the planes, who hadn't understood what was going on, and was now lying in the ruins of his home, his tiny body twisted and broken and missing pieces.
Dead.
They were all dead.
They'd been closer to the bomb blast than Isabeau. When the house had collapsed, it had fallen in a way that formed a pocket of space around Isabeau, enough for her to move and start digging free.
If she'd had the strength.
But her injuries had made her weak – more so than she'd ever been in her life.
Isabeau closed her eyes and wept.
She'd tried to save them and now they were all dead, and she was probably going to die too, trapped here with what was left of their bodies. And maybe it was her fault. If she hadn't dug them out of the bombed shelter then it would have protected them when the house came down. But she had rescued them, and in doing so, she had doomed them all.
"Help," she screamed.
Throughout the war so far, she'd been the one to dig people out of the rubble, and now she needed someone to save her, but no one came. No one could hear her.
"Help." She looked at Oliver again. His face was tilted towards her, blank eyes seeming to stare into her own. A dark trail of blood dripped from his nostrils. "Someone help me, please."
But still no one came.
Hours trickled past.
Isabeau struggled to catalogue her injuries – broken ribs, broken fingers on one hand, a head injury that started bleeding again every time she tried to move, a deep gash on her left leg, through which a ragged piece of bone poked through, a large length of metal puncturing her right side, low down, above her hip. Her left ear felt strange, like it was lower down than it used to be, and she didn't dare touch it to find out. The throbbing ache in her shoulder suggested that it was dislocated, and there was a dull, heavy feeling in her abdomen, the sensation of something tearing deep inside when she tried to move. If she was human, she'd have been concussed, and she still wasn't convinced that she wasn't. Could vampires get concussion?
More than two hundred years had passed since she'd been made a vampire, and there were still things she didn't know about herself.
But she did know that she needed blood. She'd lost too much of her own, and her injuries were bad enough that she couldn't heal without help.
If she didn't get blood, then eventually she would die in here.
Isabeau closed her eyes and drifted out again.
A brick falling close to her head jerked her awake.
Her mouth was full of dust and blood, and her eyes were raw from the grit, and everything hurt.
She no longer had any idea how long she'd been lying here, surrounded by the pieces of the people she'd tried to save, the reek of their ruined bodies pressing down on her.
The rubble blocked off any view of the outside world, so she had no idea whether it was still night, or if day had broken.
Something scraped above her head, and another brick dislodged and fell, narrowly missing her. Sooner or later the whole thing was bound to cave in and crush her.
Maybe that was okay.
Maybe she'd lived long enough.
She closed her eyes.
But . . . she opened them again.
Isabeau didn't want to die.
These last couple of decades had seen her becoming deeply disillusioned with life, weighed down by her own loneliness, but now that she was staring death in the face, she realised that she wanted to live.
She tried again to move, and a scream ripped from her throat.
"I am not dying here," she said through gritted teeth.
She swiped the grit from her eyes with her unbroken fingers, and carefully probed the piece of metal sticking through her side. It felt like it was still attached to something on the other side, which meant she couldn't pull it out. She would have to pull herself up.
She flattened her hand against the rubble beneath her for leverage and tried to sit up, but it was too much and she collapsed with a moan.
A rat scurried over Frederick's body, pausing on the bloody ruin of his head, and Isabeau locked eyes with it. It was too small to properly return her strength, but a little blood was better than no blood. She waited, one hand stretched out, limp on the rubble, and when the rat came closer, she lunged. Pain seared her broken fingers as she grabbed the small animal, but she pushed through that pain and brought the rat to her mouth. Her fangs slid out and the rat squealed as she bit down. Rat blood was nothing compared to human, but it was warm and fresh, and she closed her eyes as it flowed down her throat. She drained the rat dry, then tossed the body away. That wasn't nearly enough for her wounds to heal, but it helped cut through the dizzy ache in her head.
"I am getting out of here," she whispered.
Even if it meant she had to lie here and wait for more rats.
They came slowly, one by one, slipping through cracks in the debris, drawn to the bodies, and Isabeau killed each one, drinking every last drop from their bodies, but it wasn't enough.
She needed more.
But there was only one other source, except . . .
No.
Six bodies lay in this space with her, and Isabeau whimpered.
She couldn't do this.
She couldn't suck the blood from the people she had failed to save, but what choice did she have?
The rat blood had given her a tiny boost of energy, not much, but enough for her to clench her teeth again, brace her hand on the ground, and drag herself up and off whatever had impaled her.
She screamed through her clenched teeth, tears of agony squeezing out of her closed eyes, and then collapsed on her side, her throat raw with sobs.
"I'm sorry," she whispered as she dragged her battered body to where Frederick and Mary lay. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
She no longer knew if she was apologising for failing to save them, or if she was apologising for what she was about to do.
Vampires couldn't afford to be squeamish, and Isabeau was no exception, but she felt physically ill as she bent over Frederick's neck. She had known this man. He had been kind to her, and now she had to desecrate his body if she wanted to survive.
But she had no choice.
Closing her eyes, Isabeau bit down.
Rough brick ripped the skin from her knuckles as she shoved a hand through the layers of rubble, but there – that was the kiss of fresh air on her ravaged fingertips. Frederick's blood hadn't been enough to fully heal her, and Isabeau really would rather die than feed from the dead children, but she didn't need to be fully healed. She just needed to be strong enough to dig her way out.
Steeling herself, Isabeau clawed at the small hole she'd made. Bits of debris showered down, the pocket of rubble groaning around her, always on the verge of collapse, and a chunk of stone broke free and clipped her still injured shoulder, making her whimper, but she kept working, trying to make use of her strength while she still had it.
When the hole was big enough, Isabeau looked back once more at the Brown family.
"I'm sorry," she said again, but the words would never be enough.
Oliver still stared at the place where Isabeau had been lying, and though she couldn't see his eyes anymore, she didn't think she would ever forget the glassy way they'd bored into hers.
She dragged herself through the hole. It was a tight squeeze, and the edges of wood and brick and glass tore at her clothes, at her skin, and tears ran down her face as she hauled herself free and then collapsed on a section of fallen wall.
It was still dark, and somewhere behind the bombed street, the roar of fires continued. But the sound of planes and bombs had stopped, and Isabeau curled her hands around the edge of the wall she was lying on, tears sliding through the blood and grime on her face.
Voices shouted, footsteps pounded across the road, and then two men were crouching over her, their faces smeared with soot and sweat.
"Easy, now," one of them said. "We've got you."
In that moment, Isabeau didn't feel like a centuries-old-vampire. She felt like the young woman she'd been when she'd died. She felt exhausted and grief-stricken, and every time she closed her eyes, she saw the awful mess that a bomb had made of that poor family, and her mouth was foul with the taste of blood that she desperately hadn't wanted to drink.
She hadn't thought of what she would do once she was free of the wreckage, and so when one of the men carefully lifted her, she let him.
Her strength was gone again, and all she wanted to do was sleep.
They took her to St. Bart's Hospital.
It was horribly busy. Patients were packed into every room – burned from fires, crushed or wounded by flying debris or glass from shattered windows, some struggling to breathe from all the smoke they'd inhaled, some clinging to the last tatters of their life.
The nurses were exhausted, their uniforms filthy with blood and who knew what else, and one of them was quietly crying as she bandaged up what was left of a little girl's leg.
Isabeau never knew the names of the men who had rescued her.
As soon as she had a moment, she slipped from the stretcher they'd put her on, before they'd had a chance to properly examine her, and disappeared into the packed depths of the hospital.
There she found all the blood she needed.
She killed no one, but drank a little bit at a time from the people who were unconscious, or the ones who were dying, who didn't understand what was happening, until strength started returning to her limbs and her body started to knit back together.
If only her shattered mind could be healed the same way.
When she was strong enough, she silently slipped away. More patients were being brought in every minute, a constant stream of suffering, and no one noticed one chestnut-haired vampire when she took advantage of the chaos and slipped out of the front doors.
It was still night, but the sky was a ghastly orange from the fires burning all over the city. The white dome of St. Paul's cathedral rose above it all, defiant against the planes that had tried and failed to destroy it, and fresh tears stung Isabeau's eyes.
Two nurses rushed past her, carrying a sobbing child on a stretcher. "My mummy, someone has to help my mummy," she wailed. A wound on her leg was open to the bone, muscle glistening when she moved.
"Hush, sweetheart, they're still trying to find her," one of the nurses said.
A fire warden stood a foot or so away, running his fingers through sweat-slicked hair. His face was black with soot and his eyes were haunted.
"We couldn't find the mother," he said.
"What happened?" Isabeau asked.
"They didn't make it to a shelter in time. Half the damn street came down, and we dug her out of the rubble, but we can't find the mother." The warden's voice broke, and he buried his face in his hands, taking deep breaths.
Isabeau looked out at the city again, the fire and destruction, the death and suffering and horror. She thought of the Browns. She thought of what she'd just experienced, and the way she wanted to scream and never stop. Then she took all that trauma and she quietly locked it away, deep inside, where it would stay until she had time to deal with it.
"Which street was it?" she said.
"Shoe Lane."
Isabeau nodded; she knew the place.
She put a hand on the man's shoulder. "You saved that girl's life. Don't ever forget that," she said.
"Are you alright?" he asked, for the first time noticing her tattered clothes and bloodied appearance, but Isabeau didn't answer.
She was already heading in the direction of Shoe Lane.
People still needed saving.
London wouldn't give up and neither would Isabeau Aguillon.
Half an hour later, she returned to the hospital, carrying a woman with two broken legs and hair still thick with dust from the rubble she'd been buried under, who was sobbing with desperate relief for the daughter that she'd thought was killed in a blast.
Isabeau didn't see them reunite. She informed the nearest nurse who the woman was, and that her daughter was also here, and then she silently returned to the streets of London, looking for more people to save.
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