Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

Sabine arrives in the city two nights before Carnevale, the celebration prior to the Christian liturgical season of Lent. The city is busy, but Sabine manages to sneak off with a girl and drink her blood, killing her and taking a blue ribbon as a token. She drops the girl’s body into the water before she hears a man behind her tell her that she’s reckless. She turns and realizes the man is a vampire like her. He is not the first that Sabine has met since Hector and Renata, but she’s not sought friendship and connection again. The man tells Sabine that she’s making a mess in his house, claiming Venice as his city. As he steps toward her, Sabine feels the pressure of a threshold boundary pushing her back, as if she’s trying to enter a place into which she hasn’t been invited. She realizes he’s old, as he approaches completely silently, and he can control the boundary of the entire city. He tells her to come with him, and Sabine does.

As they walk people greet him as Don Accardi, and he introduces himself as Matteo. He chides Sabine for killing people and dumping their bodies in the canals but still takes her to his house.