Page 24

"More wine," said a voice to me, and I knew the voice.

Gradually, I began remembering everything. Scaling the walls, the small square rooftop, that smiling white face.

For one moment, I thought, No, quite impossible, it must have been a nightmare. But this just wasn't so. It had happened, and I remembered the rapture suddenly, the sound of the gong, and I felt myself grow dizzy as though I were losing consciousness again.

I stopped it. I wouldn't let it happen. And fear crept over me so that I didn't dare to move.

"More wine," said the voice again.

Turning my head slightly I saw a new bottle, corked, but ready for me, outlined against the window's luminous glow.

I felt the thirst again, and this time it was heightened by the salt of the broth. I wiped my lips and then I reached for the bottle and again I drank.

I fell back against the stone wall, and I struggled to look clearly through the darkness, half afraid of what I knew I would see.

Of course I was very drunk now.

I saw the window, the city. I saw the little table. And as my eyes moved slowly over the dusky corners of the room, I saw him there.

He no longer wore his black hooded cape, and he didn't sit or stand as a man might.

Rather he leaned to rest, it seemed, upon the thick stone frame of the window, one knee bent a little towards it, the other long spindly leg sprawled out to the other side. His arms appeared to hang at his sides.

And the whole impression was of something limp and lifeless, and yet his face was as animated as it had been the night before. Huge black eyes seeming to stretch the white flesh in deep folds, the nose long and thin, and the mouth the jester's smile. There were the fang teeth, just touching the colorless lip, and the hair, a gleaming mass of black and silver growing up high from the white forehead, and flowing down over his shoulders and his arms.

I think that he laughed.

I was beyond terror. I could not even scream.

I had dropped the wine. The glass bottle was rolling on the floor. And as I tried to move forward, to gather my senses and make my body more than something drunken and sluggish, his thin, gangly limbs found animation ail at once.

He advanced on me.

I didn't cry out. I gave a low roar of angry terror and scrambled up off the bed, tripping over the small table and running from him as fast as I could.

But he caught me in long white fingers that were as powerful and as cold as they had been the night before.

"Let me go, damn you, damn you, damn you!" I was stammering. My reason told me to plead, and I tried. "I'll just go away, please. Let me out of here. You have to. Let me go. "

His gaunt face loomed over me, his lips drawn up sharply into his white cheeks, and he laughed a low riotous laugh that seemed endless. I struggled, pushing at him uselessly, pleading with him again, stammering nonsense and apologies, and then I cried, "God help me!" He clapped one of those monstrous hands over my mouth.

"No more of that in my presence, Wolfkiller, or I'll feed you to the wolves of hell," he said with a little sneer. "Hmmmm? Answer me. Hmmmm?"

I nodded and he loosened his grip.

His voice had had a momentary calming effect. He sounded capable of reason when he spoke. He sounded almost sophisticated.

He lifted his hands and stroked my head as I cringed.

"Sunlight in the hair," he whispered, "and the blue sky fixed forever in your eyes. " He seemed almost meditative as he looked at me. His breath had no smell whatsoever, nor did his body, it seemed. The smell of mold was coming from his clothes.

I didn't dare to move, though he was not holding me. I stared at his garments.

A ruined silk shirt with bag sleeves and smocking at the neck of it. And worsted leggings and short ragged pantaloons.

In sum he was dressed as men had been centuries before. I had seen such clothes in tapestries in my home, in the paintings of Caravaggio and La Tour that hung in my mother's rooms.

"You're perfect, my Lelio, my Wolfkiller," he said to me, his long mouth opening wide so that again I saw the small white fangs. They were the only teeth he possessed.