The Forests of the Night the war as it really was, as James Kirkup observed, an "acid portrait of those who played at being members of the [French] Resistance". The novel's theme and title come from the opening lines to William Blake's poem "The Tyger": "Tiger, tiger, burning bright - in the forests of the night." "The Forests of the Night" was translated in 1951 into English by Nora Wydenbruck; it has not been re-printed since. Francis is the son of the Comte de Balansun, whose family resides in the French town of Saint-Clar, near the Pyrenees. Francis, in the beginning of the novel, skips
In the Forests of the Night comfort him. One day, an unknown stranger appears at their home, who is later revealed as Aubrey, and gives Rachel a black rose, which pricks her finger drawing blood. That night, Rachel hears her twin creep past her room and she follows him to find him confronting two vampires, Ather and Aubrey, who had come to transform Rachel against her will into a vampire to get back at Alexander for interfering with Ather when she tried to feed on Lynette. In an attempt to stop Ather from harming her brother Rachel confronts her but Aubrey grabs her brother and drags