Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Santa Benvida: Part One

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.