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I fell back, nearly losing my balance on the bench. My Master's arm had come between us, and his hand covered the red-haired man's shoulder.

"What's the secret, Sir?" I cried frantically, "the secret of Santa Sofia, the one we must believe?"

The red-haired man was utterly befuddled. He knew he was drunk. He knew things around him didn't make sense. But he thought it was because he was drunk. He looked at Marius's arm across his chest, and he even turned and looked at the fingers clutching his shoulder. Then he looked at Marius and so did I.

Marius was human, utterly human. There was no trace of the impermeable and indestructible god left. His eyes and his face simmered in the blood. He was flushed as a man from running, and his lips were bloody, and when he licked them now, his tongue was ruby red. He smiled at Martino, the last of them, the only one left alive.

Martino pulled his gaze away from Marius and looked at me. At once he softened and lost his alarm. He spoke with reverence.

"In the midst of the siege, as the Turks stormed the church, some of the priests left the altar of Santa Sofia," he said. "They took with them the chalice and the Blessed Sacrament, our Lord's Body and Blood. They are hidden this very day in the secret chambers of Santa Sofia, and on the very moment that we take back the city, on the very moment when we take back the great church of Santa Sofia, when we drive the Turks out of our capital, those priests, those very priests will return. They'll come out of their hiding place and go up the steps of the altar, and they will resume the Mass at the very point where they were forced to stop. "

"Ah," I said, sighing and marveling at it. "Master," I said softly. "That's a good enough secret to save a man's life, isn't it?"

"No," said Marius. "I know the story, and he made our Bianca a whore. "

The red-haired man strained to follow our words, to fathom the depth of our exchange.

"A whore? Bianca? A murderer ten times over, Sir, but not a whore. Nothing so simple as a whore. " He studied Marius as though he thought this heated passionately florid man was beautiful, indeed. And well he was.

"Ah, but you taught her the art of murder," said Marius almost tenderly, his fingers massaging the man's shoulder, while with his left arm he reached around Martino's back, until his left hand might lock on the man's shoulder with his right. He bent his forehead to touch Martino's temple.

"Hmmm," Martino shook himself all over. "I've drunk too much. I never taught her any such thing. "

"Ah, but you did, you taught her, and to kill for such paltry sums. "

"Master, what is it to us?"

"My son forgets himself," said Marius, still looking at Martino. "He forgets that I am bound to kill you on behalf of our sweet lady, whom you so finagled into your dark, sticky plots. "

"She rendered me a service," said Martino. "Let me have the boy!"

"Beg pardon?"

"You mean to kill me, so do it. But let me have the boy. A kiss, Sir, that's all I ask. A kiss, that is the world. I'm too drunk for anything else!"

"Please, Master, I can't endure this," I said.

"Then, how will you endure eternity, my child? Don't you know that's what I mean to give you? What power under God is there that can break me?" He threw a fierce angry glance at me, but it seemed more artifice than true emotion.

"I've learnt my lessons," I said. "I only hate to see him die. "

"Ah, yes, then you have learnt. Martino, kiss my child if he'll allow it, and mark you, be gentle when you do. "

It was I who leant across the table now and planted my kiss on the man's cheek. He turned and caught my mouth with his, hungry, sour with wine, but enticingly, electrically hot.

The tears sprang to my eyes. I opened my mouth to him and let his tongue come into me. And with my eyes shut, I felt it quiver, and his lips become tight, as if they had been turned to hard metal clamped to me and unable to close.

My Master had him, had his throat, and the kiss was frozen, and I, weeping, put out my hand blindly to find the very place in his neck where my Master's evil teeth had driven in. I felt my Master's silky lips, I felt the hard teeth beneath them, I felt the tender neck.

I opened my eyes and pulled myself away. My doomed Martino sighed and moaned and closed his lips, and sat back in my Master's grip with his eyes half-mast.

He turned his head slowly towards my Master. In a small raw drunken voice, he spoke. "For Bianca . . . "

"For Bianca," I said. I sobbed, muffling it with my hand.

My Master drew up. With his left hand, he smoothed back Martino's damp and tangled hair. "For Bianca," he said into his ear.

"Never . . . never should have let her live," came the last sighing words from Martino. His head fell forward over my Master's right arm.