2
I was awake and I was very thirsty.
I wanted a great deal of very cold white wine, the way it is when you bring it up out of the cellar in autumn. I wanted something fresh and sweet to eat, like a ripe apple.
It did occur to me that I had lost my reason, though I couldn't have said why.
I opened my eyes and knew it was early evening. The light might have been morning light, but too much time had passed for that. It was evening.
And through a wide, heavily barred stone window I saw hills and woods, blanketed with snow, and the vast tiny collection of rooftops and towers that made up the city far away. I hadn't seen it like this since the day I came in the post carriage. I closed my eyes and the vision of it remained as if I'd never opened my eyes at all.
But it was no vision. It was there. And the room was warm in spite of the window. There had been a fire in the room, I could smell it, but the fire had gone out.
I tried to reason. But I couldn't stop thinking about cold white wine, and apples in the basket. I could see the apples. I felt myself drop down out of the branches of the tree, and I smelled all around me the freshly cut grass.
The sunlight was blinding on the green fields. It shone on Nicolas's brown hair, and on the deep lacquer of the violin. The music climbed up to the soft, rolling clouds. And against the sky I saw the battlements of my father's house.
Battlements.
I opened my eyes again.
And I knew I was lying in a high tower room several miles from Paris.
And just in front of me, on a crude little wooden table, was a bottle of cold white wine, precisely as I had dreamed it.
For a long time I looked at it, looked at the frost of droplets covering it, and I could not believe it possible to reach for it and drink.
Never had I known the thirst I was suffering now. My whole body thirsted. And I was so weak. And I was getting a little cold.
The room moved when I moved. The sky gleamed in the window.
And when at last I did reach for the bottle and pull the cork from it and smell the tart, delicious aroma, I drank and drank without stopping, not caring what would happen to me, or where I was, or why the bottle had been set here.
My head swung forward. The bottle was almost empty and the faraway city was vanishing in the black sky, leaving a little sea of lights behind it.
I put my hands to my head.
The bed on which I'd been sleeping was no more than stone with straw strewn upon it, and it was coming to me slowly that I might be in some sort of jail.
But the wine. It had been too good for a jail. Who would give a prisoner wine like that, unless of course the prisoner was to be executed.
And another aroma came to me, rich and overpowering and so delicious that it made me moan. I looked about, or I should say, I tried to look about because I was almost too weak to move. But the source of this aroma was near to me, and it was a large bowl of beef broth. The broth was thick with bits of meat, and I could see the steam rising from it. It was still hot.
I grabbed it in both hands immediately and I drank it as thoughtlessly and greedily as I'd chunk the wine.
It was so satisfying it was as if I'd never known any food like it, that rich boiled-down essence of the meat, and when the bowl was empty I fell back, full, almost sick, on the straw.
It seemed something moved in the darkness near me. But I was not sure. I heard the chink of glass.
"More wine," said a voice to me, and I knew the voice.
Gradually, I began remembering everything. Scaling the walls, the small square rooftop, that smiling white face.
For one moment, I thought, No, quite impossible, it must have been a nightmare. But this just wasn't so. It had happened, and I remembered the rapture suddenly, the sound of the gong, and I felt myself grow dizzy as though I were losing consciousness again.
I stopped it. I wouldn't let it happen. And fear crept over me so that I didn't dare to move.
"More wine," said the voice again.
Turning my head slightly I saw a new bottle, corked, but ready for me, outlined against the window's luminous glow.
I felt the thirst again, and this time it was heightened by the salt of the broth. I wiped my lips and then I reached for the bottle and again I drank.
I fell back against the stone wall, and I struggled to look clearly through the darkness, half afraid of what I knew I would see.
Of course I was very drunk now.
I saw the window, the city. I saw the little table. And as my eyes moved slowly over the dusky corners of the room, I saw him there.
He no longer wore his black hooded cape, and he didn't sit or stand as a man might.
Rather he leaned to rest, it seemed, upon the thick stone frame of the window, one knee bent a little towards it, the other long spindly leg sprawled out to the other side. His arms appeared to hang at his sides.
And the whole impression was of something limp and lifeless, and yet his face was as animated as it had been the night before. Huge black eyes seeming to stretch the white flesh in deep folds, the nose long and thin, and the mouth the jester's smile. There were the fang teeth, just touching the colorless lip, and the hair, a gleaming mass of black and silver growing up high from the white forehead, and flowing down over his shoulders and his arms.
I think that he laughed.
I was beyond terror. I could not even scream.
I had dropped the wine. The glass bottle was rolling on the floor. And as I tried to move forward, to gather my senses and make my body more than something drunken and sluggish, his thin, gangly limbs found animation ail at once.
He advanced on me.
I didn't cry out. I gave a low roar of angry terror and scrambled up off the bed, tripping over the small table and running from him as fast as I could.
But he caught me in long white fingers that were as powerful and as cold as they had been the night before.
"Let me go, damn you, damn you, damn you!" I was stammering. My reason told me to plead, and I tried. "I'll just go away, please. Let me out of here. You have to. Let me go."
His gaunt face loomed over me, his lips drawn up sharply into his white cheeks, and he laughed a low riotous laugh that seemed endless. I struggled, pushing at him uselessly, pleading with him again, stammering nonsense and apologies, and then I cried, "God help me!" He clapped one of those monstrous hands over my mouth.
"No more of that in my presence, Wolfkiller, or I'll feed you to the wolves of hell," he said with a little sneer. "Hmmmm? Answer me. Hmmmm?"
I nodded and he loosened his grip.
His voice had had a momentary calming effect. He sounded capable of reason when he spoke. He sounded almost sophisticated.
He lifted his hands and stroked my head as I cringed.
"Sunlight in the hair," he whispered, "and the blue sky fixed forever in your eyes." He seemed almost meditative as he looked at me. His breath had no smell whatsoever, nor did his body, it seemed. The smell of mold was coming from his clothes.
I didn't dare to move, though he was not holding me. I stared at his garments.
A ruined silk shirt with bag sleeves and smocking at the neck of it. And worsted leggings and short ragged pantaloons.
In sum he was dressed as men had been centuries before. I had seen such clothes in tapestries in my home, in the paintings of Caravaggio and La Tour that hung in my mother's rooms.
"You're perfect, my Lelio, my Wolfkiller," he said to me, his long mouth opening wide so that again I saw the small white fangs. They were the only teeth he possessed.
I shuddered. I felt myself dropping to the floor.
But he picked me up easily with one arm and laid me down gently on the bed.
In my mind I was praying fiercely, God help me, the Virgin Mary help me, help me, help me, as I peered up into his face.
What was it I was seeing? What had I seen the night before? The mask of old age, this grinning thing cut deeply with the marks of time and yet frozen, it seemed, and hard as his hands. He wasn't a living thing. He was a monster. A vampire was what he was, a blood-sucking corpse from the grave gifted with intellect!
And his limbs, why did they so horrify me?. He looked like a human, but he didn't move like a human. It didn't seem to matter to him whether he walked or crawled, bent over or knelt. It filled me with loathing. Yet he fascinated me. I had to admit it. He fascinated me. But I was in too much danger to allow such a strange state of mind.
He gave a deep laugh now, his knees wide apart, his fingers resting on my cheek as he made a great arc over me.
"Yeeeees, lovely one, I'm hard to look at!" he said. His voice was still a whisper and he spoke in long gasps. "I was old when I was made. And you're perfect, my Lelio, my blue-eyed young one, more beautiful even without the lights of the stage."
The long white hand played with my hair again, lifting up the strands and letting them drop as he sighed.
"Don't weep, Wolfkiller," he said. "You're chosen, and your tawdry little triumphs in the House of Thesbians will be nothing once this night comes to a close."
Again came that low riot of laughter.
There was no doubt in my mind, at least at this moment, that he was from the devil, that God and the devil existed, that beyond the isolation I'd known only hours ago lay this vast realm of dark beings and hideous meanings and I had been swallowed into it somehow.
It occurred to me quite clearly I was being punished for my life, and yet that seemed absurd. Millions believed as I believed the world over. Why the hell was this happening to me? And a grim possibility started irresistibly to take shape, that the world was no more meaningful than before, and this was but another horror...
"In God's name, get away!" I shouted. I had to believe in God now. I had to. That was absolutely the only hope. I went to make the Sign of the Cross.
For one moment he stared at me, his eyes wide with rage. And then he remained still.
He watched me make the Sign of the Cross. He listened to me call upon God again and again.
He only smiled, making his face a perfect mask of comedy from the proscenium arch.
And I went into a spasm of crying like a child. "Then the devil reigns in heaven and heaven is hell," I said to him. "Oh, God, don't desert me. . ." I called on all the saints I had ever for a little while loved.
He struck me hard across the face. I fell to one side and almost slipped from the bed to the floor. The room went round. The sour taste of the wine rose in my mouth.
And I felt his fingers again on my neck.
"Yes, fight, Wolfkiller," he said. "Don't go into hell without a battle. Mock God."
"I don't mock!" I protested.
Once again he pulled me to himself.
And I fought him harder than I had ever fought anyone or anything in my existence, even the wolves. I beat on him, kicked him, tore at his hair. But I might as well have fought the animated gargoyles from a cathedral, he was that powerful.
He only smiled.
Then all the expression went out of his face. It seemed to become very long. The cheeks were hollow, the eyes wide and almost wondering, and he opened his mouth. The lower lip contracted. I saw the fangs.
"Damn you, damn you, damn you!" I was roaring and bellowing. And he drew closer and the teeth went through my flesh.
Not this time, I was raging, not this time. I will not feel it. I will resist. I will fight for my soul this time.
But it was happening again.
The sweetness and the softness and the world far away, and even he in his ugliness was curiously outside of me, like an insect pressed against a glass who causes no loathing in us because he cannot touch us, and the sound of the gong, and the exquisite pleasure, and then I was altogether lost. I was incorporeal and the pleasure was incorporeal. I was nothing but pleasure. And I slipped into a web of radiant dreams.
A catacomb I saw, a rank place. And a white vampire creature waking in a shallow grave. Bound in heavy chains he was, the vampire; and over him bent this monster who had abducted me, and I knew that his name was Magnus, and that he was mortal still in this dream, a great and powerful alchemist. And he had unearthed and bound this slumbering vampire right before the crucial hour of dusk.
And now as the light died out of the heavens, Magnus drank from his helpless immortal prisoner the magical and accursed blood that would make him one of the living dead. Treachery it was, the theft of immortality. A dark Prometheus stealing a luminescent fire. Laughter in the darkness. Laughter echoing in the catacomb. Echoing as if down the centuries. And the stench of the grave. And the ecstasy, absolutely fathomless, and irresistible, and then drawing to a finish.
I was crying. I lay on the straw and I said:
"Please, don't stop it. . ."
Magnus was no longer holding me and my breathing was once again my own, and the dreams were dissolved. I fell down and down as the nightful of stars slid upwards, jewels affixed to a dark purple veil. "Clever that. I had thought the sky was...real."
The cold winter air was moving just a little in this room. I felt the tears on my face. I was consumed with thirst!
And far, far away from me, Magnus stood looking down at me, his hands dangling low beside his thin legs.
I tried to move. I was craving. My whole body was thirsty.
"You're dying, Wolfkiller," he said. "The light's going out of your blue eyes as if all the summer days are gone..."
"No, please..." This thirst was unbearable. My mouth was open, gaping, my back arched. And it was here at last, the final horror, death itself, like this.
"Ask for it, child," he said, his face no longer the grinning mask, but - utterly transfigured with compassion. He looked almost human, almost naturally old. "Ask and you shall receive," he said.
I saw water rushing down all the mountain streams of my childhood. "Help me. Please."
"I shall give you the water of all waters," he said in my ear, and it seemed he wasn't white at all. He was just an old man, sitting there beside me. His face was human, and almost sad.
But as I watched his smile and his gray eyebrows rise in wonder, I knew it wasn't true. He wasn't human. He was that same ancient monster only he was filled with my blood!
"The wine of all wines," he breathed. "This is my Body, this is my Blood." And then his arms surrounded me. They drew me to him and I felt a great warmth emanating from him, and he seemed to be filled not with blood but with love for me.
"Ask for it, Wolfkiller, and you will live forever," he said, but his voice sounded weary and spiritless, and there was something distant and tragic in his gaze.
I felt my head turn to the side, my body a heavy and damp thing that I couldn't control. I will not ask, I will die without asking, and then the great despair I feared so much lay before me, the emptiness that was death, and still I said No. In pure horror I said No. I will not bow down to it, the chaos and the horror. I said No.
"Life everlasting," he whispered.
My head fell on his shoulder.
"Stubborn Wolfkiller." His lips touched me, warm, odorless breath on my neck.
"Not stubborn," I whispered. My voice was so weak I wondered if he could hear me. "Brave. Not stubborn." It seemed pointless not to say it. What was vanity now? What was anything at all? And such a trivial word was stubborn, so cruel . . .
He lifted my face, and holding me with his right hand, he lifted his left hand and gashed his own throat with his nails.
My body bent double in a convulsion of terror, but he pressed my face to the wound, as he said: "Drink."
I heard my scream, deafening in my own ears. And the blood that was flowing out of the wound touched my parched and cracking lips.
The thirst seemed to hiss aloud. My tongue licked at the blood. And a great whiplash of sensation caught me. And my mouth opened and locked itself to the wound. I drew with all my power upon the great fount that I knew would satisfy my thirst as it had never been satisfied before.
Blood and blood and blood. And it was not merely the dry hissing coil of the thirst that was quenched and dissolved, it was all my craving, all the want and misery and hunger that I had ever known.
My mouth widened, pressed harder to him. I felt the blood coursing down the length of my throat. I felt his head against me. I felt the tight enclosure of his arms.
I was against him and I could feel his sinews, his bones, the very contour of his hands. I knew his body. And yet there was this numbness creeping through me and a rapturous tingling as each sensation penetrated the numbness, and was amplified in the penetration so that it became fuller, keener, and I could almost see what I felt.
But the supreme part of it remained the sweet, luscious blood filling me, as I drank and drank.
More of it, more, this was all I could think, if I thought at all, and for all its thick substance, it was like light passing into me, so brilliant did it seem to the mind, so blinding, that red stream, and all the desperate desires of my life were a thousand fold fed.
But his body, the scaffolding to which I clung, was weakening beneath me. I could hear his breath in feeble gasps. Yet he didn't make me stop.
Love you, I wanted to say, Magnus, my unearthly master, ghastly thing that you are, love you, love you, this was what I had always so wanted, wanted, and could never have, this, and you've given it to me!
I felt I would die if it went on, and on it did go, and I did not die.
But quite suddenly I felt his gentle loving hands caressing my shoulders and with his incalculable strength, he forced me backwards.
I let out a long mournful cry. Its misery alarmed me. But he was pulling me to my feet. He still held me in his arms.
He brought me to the window, and I stood looking out, with my hands out to the stone on either side. I was shaking and the blood in me pulsed in all my veins. I leaned my forehead against the iron bars.
Far, far below lay the dark cusp of a hill, overgrown with trees that appeared to shimmer in the faint light of the stars.
And beyond, the city with its wilderness of little lights sunk not in darkness but in a soft violet mist. The snow everywhere was luminescent, melting. Rooftops, towers, walls, all were myriad facets of lavender, mauve, rose.
This was the sprawling metropolis.
And as I narrowed my eyes, I saw a million windows like so many projections of beams of light, and then as if this were not enough, in the very depths I saw the unmistakable movement of the people. Tiny mortals on tiny streets, heads and hands touching in the shadows, a lone man, no more than a speck ascending a windblown belfry. A million souls on the tessellated surface of the night, and coming soft on the air a dim mingling of countless human voices. Cries, songs, the faintest wisps of music, the muted throb of bells.
I moaned. The breeze seemed to lift my hair and I heard my own voice as I had never heard it before crying.
The city dimmed. I let it go, its swarming millions lost again in the vast and wondrous play of lilac shadow and fading light.
"Oh, what have you done, what is this that you've given to me!" I whispered.
And it seemed my words did not stop one after another, rather they ran together until all of my crying was one immense and coherent sound that perfectly amplified my horror and my joy.
If there was a God, he did not matter now. He was part of some dull and dreary realm whose secrets had long ago been plundered, whose lights had long ago gone out. This was the pulsing center of life itself round which all true complexity revolved. Ah, the allure of that complexity, the sense of being there . . .
Behind me the scratch of the monster's feet came on the stones.
And when I turned I saw him white and bled dry and like a great husk of himself. His eyes were stained with blood-red tears and he reached out to me as if in pain.
I gathered him to my chest. I felt such love for him as I had never known before.
"Ah, don't you see?" came the ghastly voice with its long words, whispers without end, "My heir chosen to take the Dark Gift from me with more fiber and courage than ten mortal men, what a Child of Darkness you are to be."
I kissed his eyelids. I gathered his soft black hair in my hands. He was no ghastly thing to me now but merely that which was strange and white, and full of some deeper lesson perhaps than the sighing trees below or the shimmering city calling me over the miles.
His sunken cheeks, his long throat, the thin legs ... these were but the natural parts of him.
"No, fledgling," he sighed. "Save your kisses for the world. My time has come and you owe me but one obeisance only. Follow me now."