Then, having wiped his face clean of both blood and make-up, Alexandru tore off his ruined garments and replaced them with those of the dead Janissary. He left the copy of the Qu’ran, which proved extremely painful to the touch, but he gladly took the scimitar, and cautiously ventured out into the night air.

He was well aware that with his chalky complexion, long hair, and clean-shaven face, he looked nothing like a Janissary to anyone who would bother to look for longer than a fraction of a second, but he was in luck: he could hear the voices of the soldiers around him, scattered throughout the old ruins, but none were in sight, and with both his warrior and vampire instincts to depend upon, avoiding them should be eminently possible, if not exactly as easy as falling off a log… but let’s be thankful for small mercies, he thought, tightening his grip on the scimitar and creeping along the broken and overgrown flagstone pathways.