Nearly ten years later, Father Sandor (a local abbot) interrupts a funeral ceremony — in which a young woman's corpse is about to be staked through the heart and then cremated despite her mother's anguished pleas — and chastises the presiding priest for perpetuating the fear of vampirism. He demonstrates that the woman does not carry the curse, and admonishes the mourners to conduct a proper Christian burial. The next morning Charles and Diana can find no trace of Alan, Helen, or Klove. Charles takes Diana to the woodsman’s hut and then returns to the castle to search for them.