Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

In the Mud and the Blood: Part One

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.