The Cross and the Black: [A Free Vampire Novella of Renaissance France]

Brash and beautiful Claude Severin feels content. By day, light servant duties occupy him; by night, he moonlights as a gay prostitute. Certainly, a few gambling debts annoy him, and he sometimes wishes his big and brooding master, Serge, would stop frowning and kiss him instead. But life is good enough, that is until Serge announces he's fed up with Claude's sinful ways.  Suddenly, Claude is faced with homelessness, and the sickening prospect of Serge never owning up to his real feelings.

Meanwhile, a stranger, the tall and pale-faced Guy Sewell, hounds Claude about a mysterious debt. As far as Claude is concerned, this debt is a bit of poppycock. Guy would hear none of that, of course, but he is willing to compromise on the nature of payment. And if Claude is careful enough, 'payment' might just be the solution to all his problems, but all for a mysterious price. 

Amid the squalor and the excitement, the sacred and the profane of 16th century French Toulouse, The Cross and the Black serves up a jocular tale of bumshoving, blasphemy, and bumptious fellows. Episode one of a four part serial.