often craved it. I think I've been waiting for you these long three and a half years, knowing I would relinquish everything to you when I saw you. Yes, waiting. Why is it that this must be done I can't answer --.'
" 'What? What must be done? What are you saying?' I pleaded. 'I don't understand you.'
" 'It's as though the evil builds up,' she said, 'and then it must be siphoned off into a new one, and I give birth as I never could in life.'
" 'I can't follow you.'
"She turned and looked down at me, and there spread across her face the most transcendent smile.
" 'Why do I get the feeling that you're a giant cat?' I asked suddenly, 'even to your lovely eyes, and I'm some luckless prey that you've randomly selected?'
" 'Never random,' she said, her face exquisitely serious. 'No, never random. But carefully, out of circumstance, and on merit, and out of loneliness. But never random, no, never that. You are much loved. You have been long awaited.'
"A wave of sheer drunkenness passed over me. I was about to slip into unconsciousness.
"The figure before me started flashing on and off, as if someone had ahold of the light switch and meant to drive me mad. I tried to stand up but I couldn't.
"I put the ciborium on the edge of the desk and pushed it back with my right fingers. I saw her fill it again with wine. No more, I thought, but then she lifted it and put it to my lips. I took it. I tried to decline. She tipped it and I drank it as it spilled down my neck and into my shirt. It was delicious, much more so now than in the beginning. I fell back. I saw the ciborium lying on the floor. I saw the red wine on the marble.
" 'No, not on the beautiful white marble,' I said. 'It's too like blood, look at it.' Again, I tried to stand up. I couldn't.
"She knelt down in front of me.
" 'I have cruelty in me,' she said. 'I have cruelty in me which will be answered. Don't expect anything else from me. You'll have the gifts I choose to give and those only, and I'll make no mewling bastards such as others make, fodder for the old ones, but I'll leave you strong when I leave you, and with all the gifts you need.'
"I couldn't answer her. My lips would no longer move.
"Suddenly I saw Goblin behind her! He was indistinct, all force, not illusion, and she rose in a fury, trying to throw him off. He had pulled the choke hold on her, the very move she had once pulled on me, and she stomped her foot on the floor as she threw her elbow back at him. He dissolved yet came at her again, infuriating her.
"Again the light was flickering. My muscles were paralyzed. I saw her in the flicker as she darted across the room. She gathered up the huge wrap of mink and came towards me, and again he tried to stifle her, but she would have none of it. Slapping him away from her, she reached for me. And with one slender arm she snatched me bodily from the chair, and in the mink wrapped my entire body as though such a gesture was nothing to her, and then she enveloped me in her arms.
"She cursed at Goblin. 'Say farewell to your lover!'
"We were in the open air. I saw Goblin clinging to us. I saw his face, his open mouth as he howled. He slipped down, down as though he were drowning.
"We were rising, and I saw the clouds below me. And I felt the wind against my cheek, and my skin was chilled, but it didn't matter because all around me were the glorious stars.
"She pressed her lips to my ear. And just before consciousness left me entirely, I heard her speak.
" 'Pay heed to these cold beacons,' she said, 'for in all your long life, you may never find warmer friends than these.' "
Chapter 38
38
"I AWOKE once during daylight. I lay on a soft bed on a terrace, and all around me were flowers. There were potted geraniums along the balustrade, and beyond those were white-and-pink oleanders, and I thought in my dizziness and my madness that I could see a distant mountain to my right, which I knew certainly by its shape to be Vesuvius, and when I