"Are you lonely?"
"God, yes. That's the only reason I was even tempted to let you do this. You know, I have the instincts of a predator, it does that. But I was born human."
"How did you infect your son?"
"Accident. I was infected soon after I was married. Pietra, my wife, is long dead."
"Pietra. Strange name."
"Not so strange in thirteenth-century Florence. I turned shortly after I was married. I was very ill. I knew I needed blood, but no knowledge of why or how to control my thirst. I took blood from a priest who came to give me last rites. My thirst was so voracious, I killed him. Not murder, Gretchen. I was no more guilty than a baby suckling at breast. The first thirst is overpowering. I took too much, and when I saw that he was dead, I put on my clothes and ran away."
"Leaving your wife."
"Never saw her again. But years later I encountered this young man at a gambling table. Pretended to befriend him. Overpowered him in a narrow dark street. Drank to slake my thirst. Later I encountered him, changed. As a rival for the blood of the neighbourhood. I had infected him, he had got the fever, developed into — what I am. Later I put the pieces together; I had left Pietra pregnant, this was our son, you see. He had the right genes. If he hadn't, he would have never even noticed that modest blood loss." His hand stroked her naked shoulder.
"Where is he now?"
"I often wonder. I drove him off soon after he finished the change. Vampires can't stand one another. They interfere with each other's hunting."
"Why have you chosen to tell me this?" She tried to control her voice, but heard it thicken.
"I tell people all the time what I am. Nobody ever believes it." He stood, pulling her to her feet, kissed her again, pressing his hips to her body. She ran her hands over his shoulders and loosened his shirt. "You don't believe me, either."
And then she smiled. "I want to believe you. I told you once, I don't want to be human."
He raised his eyebrows and smiled down at her. "I doubt you have the right genes to be anything else."
His bedroom was neat, sparsely furnished. She recognized books from Miss Trilby's Tomes, Red Dragon, Confessions of an English Opium Eater on a low shelf near the bed. Unexpectedly, he lifted her off her feet and laid her on the quilt. They kissed again, a long, complicated kiss. He took her slowly. He didn't close the door, and from the bed she could see his computer screen in the living-room. The Giger wraiths in his screen saver danced slowly to their passion. And then she closed her eyes, and the wraiths danced behind her lids.
When they were finished, she knew that she had lied; if she did not feel love, then it was something as strong and as dangerous.
She traced a vein on the back of his hand. "You were born in Italy?"
He kissed the hand with which she had been tracing his veins. "Hundreds of years ago, yes. Before my flesh became numb."
"Then why don't you speak with an accent?"
He rolled on to his back, hands behind his head, and grinned. "I've been an American longer than you have. I made it a point to get rid of my accent. Aren't you going to ask me about the sun and garlic and silver bullets?"
"All just superstition?"
"It would seem." He smiled wryly. "But there is the gradual loss of feeling."
"You say you can't love."
He groped in the bedside table for a pen. He drove the tip into his arm. "You see?" Blood welled up slowly.
"Stop! My god, must you hurt yourself?"
"Just demonstrating. The flesh has been consumed by the — by the cancer, if that's what it is. It starts in the coldest parts of the body. No nerves. I don't feel . It has nothing to do with emotion."
"And because you are territorial"
"Yes. But the emotions don't die, exactly. There's this horrible conflict. And physically, the metastasis continues, very slowly. I heard of a very old vampire whose brain had turned. He was worse than a shark, a feeding machine."
She pulled the sheets around her. The room seemed cold now that they were no longer entwined. "You seemed human enough, when you — "
"You didn't feel it when I kissed you?"
"Feel"
He guided her index finger into his mouth, under the tongue. A bony little organ there, tiny spikes, retracted under the root of the tongue.
She jerked her hand away, suddenly afraid. He caught it and kissed it again, almost mockingly.
She shuddered, tenderness confounded with terror, and buried her face in the pillow. But wasn't this what she had secretly imagined, hoped for?
"Next time," she said, turning her face up to him, like a daisy to the sun, "draw blood, do."
The wraiths in his screen saver danced.
The idea of a bus trip to Seattle filled her with dread, and she put it off, as if somehow by staying in Warren she could stop the progress of reality. But a second letter, this from her ex-sister-in-law Miriam, forced her to face facts. The chemotherapy, Miriam wrote, was not working this time. Ashley was "fading".
"Fading"!
The same mail brought a postcard from Scuroforno. Out of town on business, seeing to investments. Be well, human , he wrote.
She told Miss Trilby she needed time off to see Ashley.
"Lambkin, you look awful. Don't go on the bus. I'll lend you money for the plane, and you can pay me back when you marry some rich lawyer."
"No, Miss Trilby. I have a cold, that's all." Her skin itched, her throat and mouth were sore, her head throbbed.
They dusted books that afternoon. When Gretchen came down from the stepladder, she was so exhausted she curled up on the settee in the back room with a copy of As You Desire . The words swam before her eyes, but they might stop her from thinking, thinking about Ashley, about cancer, immortal cells killing their mortal host. Thinking, immortal . It might have worked. A different cancer. And then she stopped thinking.
And awoke in All Soul's Hospital, in pain and confusion.
"Drink. You're dehydrated," the nurse said. The room smelled of bleach, and dead flowers.
Who had brought her in?
"I don't know. Your employer? An elderly woman. Doctor will be in to talk to you. Try to drink at least a glass every hour."
In lucid moments, Gretchen rejoiced. It was the change, surely it was the change. If she lived, she would be released from all the degrading baggage that being human hung upon her.
The tests showed nothing. Of course, the virus would not culture in agar, Gretchen thought. If it was a virus.
She awoke nights thinking of human blood. She whimpered when they took away her room-mate, an anorexic widow, nearly dry, but an alluring source of a few delicious drops, if only she could get to her while the nurses were away.
Miss Trilby visited, and only by iron will did Gretchen avoid leaping upon her. Gretchen screamed, "Get away from me! I'll kill you!" The doctors, unable to identify her illness, must have worried about her outburst; she didn't get another room-mate. And they didn't release her, though she had no insurance.
Miss Trilby did not come back.
They never thought of cancer. Cancer does not bring a fever and thirst, and bright, bright eyes, and a numbness in the fingers.
Finally, she realized she had waited too long. The few moments of each day that delirium left her, she was too weak to overpower anybody.
Scuroforno came in when she was almost gone. She was awake, floating, relishing death's sweet breath, the smell of disinfectants.
"I'm under quarantine," she whispered. This was not true, but nobody had come to see her since she had turned on Miss Trilby.
He waved that aside and unwrapped a large syringe. "What you need is blood. They wouldn't think of that, though."
"Where did you get that?" Blood was so beautiful. She wanted to press Scuroforno's wrists against the delicate itching structure under her tongue, to faint in the heat from his veins.
"You're too weak to drink. Ideally, you should have several quarts of human blood. But mine will do."
She watched, sick with hunger, as he tourniqueted his arm, slipped the needle into the vein inside his elbow and drew blood.