on me, behind me, like a shape gathered from the corners of this cluttered and oddly alien room. But outside, even as the night seemed to dissolve in a fierce driving wind, I could feel something calling to me, something inanimate which I'd never known. And a power within me seemed to answer that power, not with resistance but with an inscrutable, chilling strength.
"I moved silently through the rooms, gently dividing the doors until I saw, in the dim light cast by the flickering gas flames behind me, that sleeping woman lying in my shadow on the couch, the doll limp against her breast. Sometime before I knelt at her side I saw her eyes open, and I could feel beyond her in the collected dark those other eyes watching me, that breathless tiny vampire face waiting.
"'Will you care for her, Madeleine?' I saw her hands clutch at the doll, turning its face against her breast. And my own hand went out for it, though I did not know why, even as .she was answering me.
"'Yes!' She repeated it again desperately.
"'Is this what you believe her to be, a doll?' I asked her, my hand closing on the doll's head, only to feel her snatch it away from me, see her teeth clenched as she glared at me.
"'A child who can't die! That's what she is,' she said, as if she were pronouncing a curse.
"'Aaaaah... ' I whispered.
"'I've done with dolls,' she said, shoving it away from her into the cushions of the couch. She was fumbling with something on her breast, something she wanted me to see and not to see, her fingers catching hold of it and closing over it. I mew what it was, had noticed it before. A locket fixed with a gold pin. I wish I could describe the passion that infected her round features, how her soft baby mouth was distorted.
"'And the child who did die?' I guessed, watching her. I was picturing a doll shop, dolls with the same face. She shook her head, her hand pulling hard on the locket so the pin ripped the taffeta. It was fear I saw in her now, a consuming panic: And her hand bled as she opened it from the broken pin. I took the locket from her fingers.'My daughter,' she whispered, her lip trembling.
"It was a doll's face on the small fragment of porcelain, Claudia's face, a baby face, a saccharine, sweet mockery of innocence an artist had painted there, a child with raven hair like the doll. And the mother, terrified, was staring at the darkness an front of her.
"'Grief... ' I said gently.
"'I've done with grief,' she said, her eyes narrowing as .she looked up at me.'If you knew how I long to have your power; I'm ready for it, I hunger for it.' And she turned to me, breathing deeply, so that her breast seemed to swell under her dress.
"A violent frustration rent her face then. She turned away from me, shaking her head, her curls.'If you were a mortal man; man and monster!' she said angrily.'If I could only show you my power... : and she smiled malignantly, defiantly at me'.... I could make you want me, desire me! But you're unnatural!' Her mouth went down at the corners.'What can I give you! What can I do to make you give me what you have!' Her hand hovered over her breasts, seeming to caress them like a man's hand.
"It was strange, that moment; strange because I could never have predicted the feeling her words incited in me, the way that I saw her now with that small enticing waist, saw the round, plump curve of her breasts and those delicate, pouting lips. She never dreamed what the mortal man in me was, how tormented I was by the blood I'd only just drunk. Desire her I did, more than she knew; because she didn't understand the nature of the kill. And with a man's pride I wanted to prove that to her, to humiliate her for what she had said to me, for the cheap vanity of her provocation and the eyes that looked away from me now in disgust. But this was madness. These were not the reasons to grant eternal life.
"And cruelly, surely, I said to her,'Did you love this child?'
"I will never forget her face then, the violence in her, the absolute hatred.'Yes.' She all but hissed the words at me.'How dare you!' She reached for the