The blood poured out. It flowed as I have never seen blood flow. It drenched my shirt and I could feel it spilling down my back. But the pulling grew stronger and stronger, and a warm tingling sensation had commenced to spread across the surface of my back and chest.
The man stared, dumbfounded. The pistol dropped out of his hand. His head went back, eyes blind, and his body crumpled as if the air had been let out of it, and he lay on the floor.
Nicki had raced up the stairs and was now rushing into the box. A low hysterical murmuring was issuing from him. He thought he was witnessing my death.
And I stood still hearkening to my body in that terrible solitude that had been mine since Magnus made me the vampire. And I knew the wounds were no longer there.
The blood was drying on the silk vest, drying on the back of my torn coat. My body throbbed where the bullet had passed through me and my veins were alive with that same pulling, but the injury was no more.
And Nicolas, coming to his senses as he looked at me, realized I was unharmed, though his reason told him it couldn’t be true.
I pushed past him and made for the stairs. He flung himself against me and I threw him off. I couldn’t stand the sight of him, the smell of him.
“Get away from me!” I said.
But he came back again and he locked his arm around my neck. His face was bloated and there was an awful sound coming out of him.
“Let go of me, Nicki!” I threatened him. If I shoved him off too roughly, I’d tear his arms out of the sockets, break his back.
Break his back . . .
He moaned, stuttered. And for one harrowing split second the sounds he made were as terrible as the sound that had come from my dying animal on the mountain, my horse, crushed like an insect into the snow.
I scarcely knew what I was doing when I pried loose his hands.
The crowd broke, screaming, when I walked out onto the boulevard.
Renaud ran forward, in spite of those trying to restrain him.
“Monsieur!” He grabbed my hand to kiss it and stopped, staring at the blood.
“Nothing, my dear Renaud,” I said to him, quite surprised at the steadiness of my voice and its softness. But something distracted me as I started to speak again, something I should hearken to, I thought vaguely, yet I went on.
“Don’t give it a thought, my dear Renaud,” I said. “Stage blood, nothing but an illusion. It was all an illusion. A new kind of theatrical. Drama of the grotesque, yes, the grotesque.”
But again came that distraction, something I was sensing in the melee around me, people shuffling and pushing to get close but not too close, Nicolas stunned and staring.
“Go on with your plays,” I was saying, almost unable to concentrate on my own words, “your acrobats, your tragedies, your more civilized theatricals, if you like.”
I pulled the bank notes out of my pocket and put them in his unsteady hand. I spilled gold coins onto the pavement. The actors darted forward fearfully to gather them up. I scanned the crowd around for the source of this strange distraction, what was it, not Nicolas in the door of the deserted theater, watching me with a broken soul.
No, something else both familiar and unfamiliar, having to do with the dark.
“Hire the finest mummers”—I was half babbling—“the best musicians, the great scene painters.” More bank notes. My voice was getting loud again, the vampire voice, I could see the grimaces again and the hands going up, but they were afraid to let me see them cover their ears. “There is no limit, NO LIMIT, to what you can do here!”
I broke away, dragging my roquelaure with me, the sword clanking awkwardly because it was not buckled right. Something of the dark.
And I knew when I hurried into the first alleyway and started to run what it was that I had heard, what had distracted me, it had been the presence, undeniably, in the crowd!
I knew it for one simple reason: I was running now in the back streets faster than a mortal can run. And the presence was keeping time with me and the presence was more than one!
I came to a halt when I knew it for certain.
I was only a mile from the boulevard and the crooked