The Strain: Another Season
Episode 8

Four Nervous Vendors
Chapter One

Paris 1671

The voluptuous young beauty fluffs her dark blonde curls and wriggles out of the loose robe that was her sole concession to modesty on the carriage ride over here. Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, the marquise de Montespan, stands for a moment enjoying her nakedness before gracefully climbing onto the stone altar and stretching out luxuriously.

Her audience are unimpressed. The celebrant of this perverted Mass, the Abbé Étienne Guibourg runs his cold, black, iris-less eyes slowly over her body but is unmoved. His assistant, Catherine Monvoisin, is about Francoise's age but very plain in comparison. Her lip quirks involuntarily but she stops short of a sneer as she places a black candle between the human altar's thighs and another in her mouth. She drops some melted wax onto the naked girl's left breast making her flinch and gasp, then uses it to fix a third candle approximately over her heart.

'You have the sacrifice?' The Abbé's voice comes from the depths of a hood.

Monvoisin goes to a basket in the corner and lifts out a bundle of blankets. It begins to stir and mewl so she coos and jiggles as she returns to the Abbé's side.

The Abbé turns slowly, making an oddly menacing purring noise, his unnaturally white skin now clearly visible in the candlelight. He regards the infant with such fierce longing that even his accomplices feel uncomfortable. Eventually he turns back to the young woman on the altar. 'And you, Madame de Montespan,' he says accusingly. 'You who call on the Master's divine power to secure the King's...heart. You retrieved the book of service from the royal vault?'

She nods slightly, careful not to dislodge the lit candle in her mouth and points to her robe on the floor. He walks over and crouches beside the heap of fur. He twitches it aside and recoils as the silver-clad Occido Lumen is revealed.

'Bring it to me,' he commands Monvoisin. She obeys with a shrug, making light of her twin burdens of baby and book.

Guibourg indicates for her to place the Lumen on the lectern and open it for him.

As she does so, the doors reverberate to a blow from a battering ram and burst open. Dozens of armed militiamen charge into the building and arrest Catherine Monvoisin. Madame de Montespan escapes and runs out naked into the night but the Abbé won't leave without his prize. He casts around for something to pick it up with while the guards' leader, Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie approaches the lectern.

De la Reynie is captivated by the sight of the Lumen. He mechanically sheathes his weapon and traces the illumination on the open page with a finger - as if caressing a well-loved face. The jewel-coloured picture illustrates a mature strigoi feeding with its stinger at full extent. Unsurprisingly, the image seems to puzzle him and he lifts the book for a closer examination. The movement saves his life because at that very moment, Guibourg, now holding Madame de Montespan's fur robe for protection from silver, lunges at him with his stinger – the picture come to life. Instinctively, the horrified de la Reynie uses the Lumen first as a shield then as a weapon, flailing at the screaming strigoi's stinger and backing out into the night. The guards move in to cover their leader's retreat and overwhelm the vampire priest, forcing him up into the rafters.

Guibourg takes a run up and launches himself out of a stained glass window to continue the pursuit but it is all in vain. De la Reynie has made it across the river and with Catherine Monvoisin in custody there is no human to help him cross the water. He stands and howls at the night, tendrils of smoke coming from the tip of his assaulted stinger.

Two impossibly blue eyes in the shadow of a high chimneystack track Monsieur de la Reynie's escape.

Berlin 1990
Eichhorst's new feeding room in west of the city

Cornelius (Corey) Henke lies on a plastic-coated mattress in the newly-fitted feeding dungeon. The room has a more familiar look with sound-proofing panels fitted around the walls but it is still rectangular – whatever benefits the sixteen-sided construction conveys have yet to be discovered.

Corey is wearing only his underwear and the silver locket his great-grandmother gave him. His hands and feet are loosely bound. He floats in and out of consciousness.

Two sets of footsteps tread steadily down the corridor outside. No one is being dragged or forced and no one is fighting back. The door is pushed open and a man's voice says conversationally, 'In here.'

His fiancée, Sandra Edwards, stalks in haughtily in front of someone who is the very image of the war criminal Thomas Eichhorst – from half a century ago. She is wearing a pink silk dress and looks well-treated apart from some healed wounds on her neck and a thick collar. Corey's vision is blurry and his eyes keep shutting themselves despite his best efforts. When the girl catches sight of him, she freezes in horror. She moves to go to him but before she takes a step, Eichhorst clicks a chain onto the collar and relentlessly pulls her across his chest.

She screams and begs for mercy and, at least now, she is fighting to get away.

'No! Please don't! Let me go! Let me go! PLEASE Eichhorst! NO! PLEASE!'

The "man" opens his jaw wide and extends some kind of tentacle to suction the blood from the girl's neck. She is drained to unconsciousness and Corey faints.

Île Seguin, Paris 1709

Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie is a very elderly man now - bald, hunched and bespectacled. The first Lieutenant General of the Paris police, now retired, sits at his desk in an impressive library. The many fine old manuscripts and beautifully bound books could grace a museum or even a palace but they have all been neglected and allowed to gather fly dirt and dusty cobwebs. All, that is, except the one currently on the writing slope.

If the Occido Lumen really were a living creature, you could almost describe it as looking smug – like the single cushion-curled cat in a household of furniture-banned dogs.

De la Reynie pores over the Lumen's text, occasionally consulting other sources and very, very occasionally scratching a word in a lockable journal. Some instinct makes him look up and turn around.

A hooded figure stands in the doorway. He starts and recoils away from it, using his body to shield and protect the silver book.

'You…!' he whispers in horror. 'I know what you are.'

Berlin 1990

Sandra recovers to find herself and Corey collared and chained in the new dungeon. He's attached to the winch but she is allowed more leeway. She checks herself and her lover for life and humanity and is relieved to find both. While Corey wears so little, she is still in the pink dress and her most recent scar has been neatly dressed. Her intravenous cannula, which was never removed but had its patency carefully maintained by regular flushing with anticoagulant strigoi "saliva", is attached to a quarter-full bag of her blood type. The valve is wide open ensuring maximum flow rate. Eichhorst must really have almost emptied her this time.

Corey has no stinger marks – not even a tiny one as per the Regis 753 victims. He has bruises and wounds on his throat, head and chest as if he's fought back against a kidnapping.

There are plenty of water bottles around and she tears a bit of silk off the bottom of her dress and tenderly cleans his wounds, which brings him round.

'I'd ask if you were OK,' she says. 'But I always hate people saying that to me when it's so redundant.'

Corey moans and vomits.

'The good news is that we're both alive and human…' she says.

He tries to sit up but she gently pushes him back. 'No, no. Stay down,' she says.

She sighs and looks around.

'…The bad news is self evident.'

The really bad news in the shape of Eichhorst comes in and nods his satisfaction at seeing them both conscious and the blood bag nearly empty. He seems to accept Sandra's look of utter loathing as tribute.

She sits silently watching for his next move. Corey starts to rise, presumably to attack Eichhorst but, with wary eyes still on their captor, she gently pushes him back down.

Eichhorst advances to her end of the mattress and crouches down in front of her.

'Well done, Eichhorst,' she hisses in his face. 'You won. You finally got your struggle – your adrenalised drink. Was it all you hoped it would be? You piece of shit.'

He nods at the silver locket and chain around Corey's neck. 'Take it off,' he commands.

Sandra slowly shakes her head once.

'Let him go,' she demands as if she's learnt nothing from her period of captivity. 'You've used him to torment me and it worked but you don't need him any more. Please. Set him free.'

Eichhorst says nothing. He pierces the tip of his middle finger with his thumbnail and gives her some white blood. She grudgingly opens her mouth and, radiating hatred through the held stare, she accepts it. Eichhorst stands, steps towards Corey and crouches again. Using one hand on the young man's chest to keep him pushed down, the vampire offers him the same white blood. Corey clamps his jaw tightly shut so Eichhorst pushes his head back via a firm grip on the young man's chin and drops it up his bloody nose.

He waits a moment or two, holding Corey helpless in the same position, then stands and moves to the winch handle and starts to reel him in. Sandra leaps to her feet, suddenly strong from the white and rushes to intervene. Eichhorst just pushes her back into the wall with one hand and continues winding until Corey's head is tight to the block. He extends his stinger to its maximum length and drinks briefly from the right femoral artery.

He lets go of Sandra briefly, to seal the wound with white, holding Corey's flailing leg while does so. Then he returns to the horror-struck girl and adjusts his suit jacket.

'The Dutch are always a bit of a mongrel race,' he tells her. 'There's German in there and even a tiny bit of Hebrew but it's acceptable since he appears to be your choice.'

The vampire looks her up and down while Corey yells, 'He's lying, Sandra. I'm not German. I'm Dutch Jewish.

Then Eichhorst rips off her dress in one movement saying, 'Now. BREED!'