"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 bloodsucking 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.