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.