"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.