of the flapping of the wooden doors, and the flying about of the broken fragments of that door I'd shattered, and of draperies billowed and snapped.
The cold air of outside surrounded me. He set me down, blind, and I knew my feet were on the quay. I could hear the water of the canal near me, lapping, lapping, as the winter wind stirred it and drove the sea into the city, and I could hear a wooden boat knocking persistently against a dock.
He let slip his fingers, and I opened my eyes.
We were far from the palazzo. I was abashed to see us at such a distance, though I was not really surprised. He could do wonders, and so he let me know this now. We were in back alleyways. We stood on a small landing by a narrow canal. I had never ventured into this mean district where workmen lived.
I saw only the back porches of houses, and their ironclad windows, and a general squalor and blindness, and a rankness as refuse floated on the water of the dipping, splashing winter-blown canal.
He turned and drew me with him away from the water's edge, and for a moment I couldn't see. His white hand flashed out. I beheld one finger pointed and then I beheld a man sleeping in a long rotted gondola that had been drawn up out of the water and set on workmen's blocks. The man stirred and threw back his covering. I saw his hulking fussing shape as he grumbled and cursed at us that we dared to disturb his sleep.
I reached for my dagger. I saw the flash of his blade. The white hand of the Master, glowing like quartz, seemed only to touch the man's wrist and send the weapon flying and rolling on the stones. Befuddled and enraged, the man charged my Master in a great clumsy bid to knock my Master off his feet.
My Master caught him easily, as if he were no more than a great swaddling of evil-smelling wool. I saw my Master's face. His mouth opened. There came two tiny sharp teeth, like daggers unto themselves, as he bit down into the man's throat. I heard the man cry out, but only for an instant, and then his stinking body went still.
Astonished and enthralled, I watched as my Master closed his smooth eyes, his golden eyelashes seeming silvery in the dimness, and I heard a low wet sound, barely audible but horribly suggestive of the flow of something, and that something had to be the man's blood. My Master pressed himself ever more closely to his victim, his plainly visible white fingers coaxing the life fluid from the dying body, as he gave off a long sweet savoring sigh. He drank. He drank, and there was no mistaking it. He even twisted his head a little as if to bring the last draught all the more quickly, and at this the man's form, now seemingly frail and plastic, shuddered all over, as if the man had gone into a final convulsion, and then was still.
The Master drew himself up and ran his tongue over his lips. There was not a drop of blood to be seen. But the blood was visible. It was visible inside my Master. His face took on a florid gleam. He turned and looked at me, and I could make out the vivid flush of his cheeks, the ruddy glister of his lips.
"This is where it comes from, Amadeo," he said. He shoved the corpse towards me, the filthy clothes brushed all against me, and as the heavy head fell back in death, he pushed it even closer so that I had to look down at the doomed man's coarse and lifeless face. He was young, he was bearded, he was not beautiful, and he was pale and he was dead.
A seam of white showed beneath each limp and expressionless eyelid. A greasy spittle hung from his decaying yellowed teeth, his breathless and colorless mouth.
I was speechless. Fear, loathing, these things had no part in it. I was simply amazed. If I thought, I thought it was wondrous.
In a sudden fit of seeming anger, my Master hurled the man's body to his left and out into the water where it fell with a dull splashing and bubbling sound.
He snatched me up, and I saw the windows falling past me. I almost screamed as we rose above the roofs. His hands clamped over my mouth. He