Gabriel sat in Claudette de Blanchet’s bedroom, reflecting on the horrors in the Skyefall catacombs and his own childhood trauma while keeping vigil with Father Lafitte. He worried about Greyhand and Aaron still out in the mines and blamed himself for endangering them by letting a female highblood escape. Lafitte made conversation about the Ordo Argent and vampires, and served tea, which Gabriel drank despite growing heat and dizziness.

As they spoke about the afflicted in Skyefall and about Mme Luncóit, Gabriel felt increasingly feverish and realized Lafitte had slipped a toxin into the tea that dulled his bloodhymn. Lafitte, entranced, urged Gabriel to open the balcony doors for the “beautiful view,” revealing the vampire child Claude de Blanchet outside. Under thrall, Lafitte took Gabriel’s sheathed sword and invited Claude in. Claude smashed into the room, and Gabriel was hurled into the wall as Lafitte threw his weapon out the window.

Claudette woke in rapture, reaching for her undead son. Claude attempted to enthrall Gabriel with the command to kneel, but Gabriel resisted and struck the boy with a silver teapot, buying a moment. Alderman de Blanchet entered, saw the scene, and intervened, clubbing Claude with a burning log and disowning him. Claudette, frenzied and devoted to Claude, stabbed her husband with Lafitte’s knife, fatally wounding him.

Lafitte attacked Gabriel with a concealed blade, demonstrating thrall-enhanced strength, but Gabriel broke the priest’s jaw and crushed him against the wall. Claude recovered and savaged Gabriel, battering him and trying to tear out his throat. Grappling on the ruined bed, Gabriel warded the vampire with the silver in his tattooed palm but was being overpowered despite broken ribs and stab wounds.

In a desperate surge, Gabriel gripped Claude’s wrist and, to his shock, the vampire’s flesh blackened and split as if boiling from within, causing Claude to scream like a child and beg his mother. At that moment, Greyhand and Aaron arrived: Greyhand wrapped his silver flail around Claude, binding him, while Aaron restrained the blood-soaked, hysterical Claudette.

With the room in ruins—the priest crushed and broken, the alderman dead, Claudette screaming over her “baby,” and Claude moaning under silver—Greyhand helped the poisoned, bleeding Gabriel to his feet. Gabriel asked how he had burned Claude by touch; Greyhand admitted he did not know, but gave Gabriel a grudging commendation for the outcome.