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Louis retreated to a cemetery in Montmartre, wanting to be alone with his grief. His sadness turned into fury, and he devised a plan to destroy the Théâtre des Vampires. He acquired a scythe, a carriage, and kerosene for his attack. Once he arrived at the theater, he boarded it up from the outside, poured kerosene everywhere, and set it on fire. When Santiago tried to escape, Louis killed him with the scythe. With the building collapsing in flames, Louis fled in the carriage and vowed to the memories of Claudia and Madeleine that every vampire responsible for their murder would die.

Two nights after the destruction of the Théâtre des Vampires, Louis returned to the site and found only charred rubble. In a café across the street, he read the newspaper, which reported that after the fire, the only things found in the ashes were some old bones and piles of abandoned costumes. Reporters assumed that the theater troupe escaped the fire, but Louis knew that the missing bodies were simply burned to ash. Troubled, Louis reflected on the fact that there hadn’t been any human guards present before his attack, even though Santiago had once mentioned that they were always there. He felt unsettled by this minor detail.

Despite the success of his revenge, Louis felt utterly lonely and unsatisfied. He wandered around Paris and visited the Louvre, a place where he had dreamt of going when he was human. As he became lost in thoughts of Claudia and what she had meant to him, he sensed Armand was following close behind. They walked together in silence until Louis admitted what he had done.

When Louis asked about the absent theater guards, Armand confessed that he had dismissed them in advance, leaving the theater and everyone in it vulnerable to Louis’s attack. The two shared an intimate moment outside the Louvre, looking into one another’s eyes with the realization that this was exactly what Louis wanted. Armand then arranged for Louis to spend the night inside the museum before dawn. Shortly afterward, they decided to leave Paris together and to travel south through the Mediterranean and on to Egypt.

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