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at a human pace, a solitary figure no longer absolutely human.
    The night was his territory, his world, his blessing. It was also his grief and his prison. Away from the glare of the sun that hurt the eyes and burned the flesh, he was aware of the perfume of the night breezes, the stillness of the dark, the protection he enjoyed between the hours of dawn and dusk. This was his time, yet he longed to walk in the daylight and to witness the sun’s movement. How he missed the shadows of midday! His flesh could not bear such fierce fire, even on a cloudy day. His rhythm and habits now were dictated by the creature within, the monster that LaRouge had created. He was a construction still of heart and lungs, of bone and muscle. Yet he felt his humanity drifting away from him, night after night. When he drew the black curtains shut across the windows of his suite at the Hotel Sanctuaire and lay in the bed that was also draped with black curtains, he thought he might as well be positioning himself in a grave. He was always cold. He could never fully rest. Some part of himself reviled the other. He was caught in the midst of transformation, knowing that over time he would lose all his humanity and become a creature of blood need, not caring who he had to slaughter to get it. His body was changing; the strength and quickness were welcome attributes, yes, but it was in small things that he realized he was on a certain path to becoming a monster. He could still drink a little wine and liquor, but straight water made him sick. He peed maybe a shot glass full of murky brown liquid every few days. Food turned his stomach. He would never have believed, in his previous life, that he could have tracked his progress from man through the deepening clutches of vampirism by how little he pulled the chain on his toilet.
    He was dying, of course. Becoming one of them, totally and truely, was a death in life. But he couldn’t give up; he couldn’t lie down in that grave and let them win. It was not in the nature of a captain of the Nineteenth Alabama Infantry Regiment, who had both taken blood and shed blood at the battle of Shiloh. It was not in the nature of Trevor Lawson, once a young Alabama lawyer and a valued husband and father.
    He walked the night. He walked along the curve of the Mississippi. He walked through the silent streets of early morning, as he pondered the future. By the time he returned to the Hotel Sanctuaire, went to the front desk and wrote Garrison, the night clerk, a note to be delivered to Father John Deale at the Church of the Apostle St. Simon, the sun was a faint blush in the eastern sky. Lawson stood outside as long as he could, watching the light strengthen. Then he pulled his hat down low over his eyes and went up the stairs to his room, where he double-locked the door, closed the heavy black window curtains, took off his clothes and settled his pale naked body upon the bed. His bruises would fade quickly; they always did. He drew the black curtains around the bed and by habit touched the ebony leather-tooled gunbelt with the two backward-holstered Colt .44s that lay next to his right side. Now he could sleep.
    Before he drifted off into dreams of again walking in the hot summer sun, his shadow striding in front of him like a taunt, Lawson heard the first of the street-vendors down on Conti Street begin their distinctive morning calls. It was a woman, calling in a musical sing-song voice, “ Apples, sweet apples, apples for sale. ”
    Lawson reluctantly let go of his hold on the daytime world. He sank away, in his soft grave beyond the curtains black.

Four.
     
    On the road to St. Benadicta, astride his muscular chestnut horse Phoenix, Lawson listened to the sounds of the night and warily scanned the forest beneath the brim of his black Stetson.
    He wore a black suit, a white shirt and a crimson waistcoat. At his waist was the ebony holster with the two backward-facing Colt .44s. The Colt on the right had a rosewood