Monster is what Louis calls himself. He's taken thousands of lives, all with a jewelike preternatural gaze and a strike he makes swift because he can't stomach playing with his food. He has before, instilling fear into a hated victim, making himself for an evening the subhuman monster some men claim him to be. He did it in anger. It's not the man he wants to be.

“No help anymore, if ever there was. Once it takes, that’s it. It's just... a part of me now.”

He mistrusts the worm inside Konstantin, but there’s too much kinship at work here, even if the worm is gross to him. He's not sure he wants to know if Konstantin can feel it move sometimes, like a mother with child.

He hesitates, face moving then going still in false starts, then quietly confesses with a troubled frown,

“Maybe I’m damned. I already believe in the Devil more than I believe in God.