so sudden., so sharp it was almost a gasp in B.J. 's mind, as the first drop of her blood, then a gush - a crimson, bloating bubble in the yellow envelope of fluid surrounding him - stained and suffused the area of Radu's weird wolf head.
And:
Ahhhh! It was almost a sob of pain, but an agony so sweet that it vibrated like some unbearable note struck on the chords of the mind. And in B.J.'s mind it was the rushing, irretrievable cry of climactic sex, the nerve-wrenching howl of a shovel in clay-cold ashes, the joy of the full moon when its call can no longer be denied. It was all of these things, and more. It was the blood that is the life.
Her blood, and Radu's life, as the influx, the monstrous infusion, commenced.
And it was always the same: as if her Master were a live, alien current, which the conductor of her blood carried back to Bonnie Jean. For once the connection was made, the current came flowing back up the life-stream and into her.
It leaped to her, quick as light, with the speed of an electric arc: the incredible, terrible fact of Him! And as always - if only for those first few unutterable, unbearable seconds -she knew the truth of Him. That there was no truth in Him!
It came and it went, and left her floating, drifting on a sea of unknown emotions, no less than his bite would have done. For one brief moment the agony of Truth ... and for the rest of time the inescapable acceptance of a Great Lie.
And before she could consider the difference, or even the existence of a difference:
Yesss! (His hiss sounded that much clearer in B.J. 's innermost being). Ah, yesss! Child of my children, my life is in you, as you were in me. My life is you, as yours will be mine. But not yet awhile, not yet...
And as something of his unthinkable pleasure receded, and he accepted the renewal of his hideous life: As for the girl, gone for a year and never to return: we must accept that she is no more. At best she has become one of theirs: a Drakul or a Ferenczy, aye. More likely, she's a husk, drained of knowledge and life both. Let us assume that you are right and she could not talk. Still she 'told' enough to interest them; hence the watcher. Or has he been there a long time, Bonnie Jean? Longer than you suspect?
Even years, decades? The latter, I think. If not, then how did they know to take one of yours in the first place? What came first, the egg, the spore, or the leech? It is a riddle; it moves in a circle and is best left alone. Likewise the girl... forget her. She is no more.
B.J. listened with the one part of her mind that remained alert. As for the rest: her eyes were closing, her head nodding until she struggled to keep it upright. Drowsing, she was carried on the current of Radu's life, and was nothing without that she belonged to him. It was his art, his hypnotism, the beguiling. She had it, too, but by comparison was an infant where he was the old, old Master ... but a master of more than mere hypnotism.
And B.J.'s heart thudded, her blood pumped, and her mind listened ...
Finaly we have this ... this mysterious one, (Radu eventualy continued). Of whom you admit to wondering: perhaps the Mysterious One? Yesss, Bonnie Jean, and you have set me to wondering, too. For I have seen him in my dreams these many ages, and the one whom you have shown to me is not dissimilar. But in my dreams ... strange, but I never saw him clearly. While I was given to know of him, I was never permited to know him. He was blurred, aye, or at best il-defined, as al dreams of the future are, only more so. And so I came to think of him as The Man With Two Faces, because while he remained the same ... his face changed! Not that he was 'two-faced,' as in the common usage of that term, you understand. No, for this has nothing to do with simple treachery.
So ... what does it mean? For I have read it in your mind, that you, too, Bonnie Jean, have seen another side of him - as if some other were looking out through his