"Monsieur. " The doctor touched my arm. "She will not have the priest come. "
"No . . . she wouldn't. " She had turned her head towards the door. If I didn't come in now, she would get up, no matter how it hurt her, and come to me. It seemed I couldn't move. And yet I pushed past the doctor and the nurse, and I went into the room and closed the doors. Blood scent. In the pale violet light of the window she sat, beautifully dressed in dark blue taffeta, her hand in her lap and the other on the arm of the chair, her thick yellow hair gathered behind her ears so that the curls spilled over her shoulders from the pink ribbons. There was the faintest bit of rouge on her cheeks. For one eerie moment she looked to me as she had when I was a little boy. So pretty. The symmetry of her face was unchanged by time or illness, and so was her hair. And a heartbreaking happiness came over me, a warm delusion that I was mortal again, and innocent again, and with her, and everything was all right, really truly all right. There was no death and no terror, just she and I in her bedroom, and she would take me in her arms. I stopped. I'd come very close to her, and she was crying as she looked up. The girdle of the Paris dress bound her too tightly, and her skin was so thin and colorless over her throat and her hands that I couldn't bear to look at them, and her eyes looked up at me from flesh that was almost bruised. I could smell death on her. I could smell decay. But she was radiant, and she was mine; she was as she'd always been, and I told her so silently with all my power, that she was lovely as my earliest memory of her when she had had her old fancy clothes still, and she would dress up so carefully and carry me on her lap in the carriage to church. And in this strange moment when I gave her to know this, how much I cherished her, I realized she heard me and she answered me that she loved me and always had. It was the answer to a question I hadn't even asked. And she knew the importance of it; her eyes were clear, unentranced. If she realized the oddity of this, that we could talk to each other without words, she gave no clue. Surely she didn't grasp it fully. She must have felt only an outpouring of love.
"Come here so I can see you, " she said, "as you are now. " The candle was by her arm on the windowsill. And quite deliberately I pinched it out. I saw her frown, a tightening of her blond brows, and her blue eyes grew just a little larger as she looked at me, at the bright silk brocade and the usual lace I'd chosen to wear for her, and the sword on my hip with its rather imposing jeweled hilt.
"Why don't you want me to see you? " she asked. "I came to Paris to see you. Light the candle again. " But there was no real chastisement in the words. I was here with her and that was enough. I knelt down before her. I had some mortal conversation in mind, that she should go to Italy with Nicki, and quite distinctly, before I could speak, she said:
"Too late, my darling, I could never finish the journey. I've come far enough. " A clamp of pain stopped her, circling her waist where the girdle bound it, and to hide it from me, she made her face very blank. She looked like a girl when she did this, and again I smelt the sickness in her, the decay in her lungs, and the clots of blood. Her mind became a riot of fear. She wanted to scream out to me that she was afraid. She wanted to beg me to hold on to her and remain with her until it was finished, but she couldn't do this, and to my astonishment, I realized she thought I would refuse her. That I was too young and too thoughtless to ever understand. This was agony. I wasn't even conscious of moving away from her, but I'd walked across the room.
Stupid little details embedded themselves in my consciousness: nymphs playing on the painted ceiling, the high gilt door handles and the melted wax in brittle stalactites on the white candles that I wanted to break off and crumple in my hand. The place looked hideous, overdressed. Did she hate it? Did she want those barren stone rooms again? I was thinking about her as if there were "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.. . " I looked back at her, her stately figure holding to the windowsill. The sky had deepened behind her and a new light, the light of house lamps and passing carriages and nearby windows, gently touched the small inverted triangle of her thin face.
"Can't you talk to me, " she said softly. "Can't you tell me how it's come about? You've brought such happiness to all of us. " Even talking hurt her. "But how does it go with you? With YOU! " I think I was on the verge of deceiving her, of creating some strong emanation of contentment with all the powers I had. I'd tell mortal lies with immortal skill. I'd start talking and talking and testing my every word to make it perfect. But something happened in the silence. I don't think I stood still more than a moment, but something changed inside of me. An awesome shift took place. In one instant I saw a vast and terrifying possibility, and in that same instant, without question, I made up my mind. It had no words to it or scheme or plan. And I would have denied it had anyone questioned me at that moment. I would have said, "No, never, farthest from my thoughts. What do you think I am, what sort of monster " . . . And yet the choice had been made. I understood something absolute. Her words had completely died away, she was afraid again and in pain again, and in spite of the pain, she rose from her chair. I saw the comforter slip away from her, and I knew she was coming towards me and that I should stop her, but I didn't do it. I saw her hands close to me, reaching for me, and the next thing I knew she had leapt backwards as if blown by a mighty wind. She had scuffed backwards across the carpet, and fallen past the chair against the wall. But she grew very still quickly as though she willed it, and there wasn't fear in her face, even though her heart was racing. Rather there was wonder and then a baffled calm. If I had thoughts at that moment, I don't know what they were. I came towards her just as steadily as she had come towards me. Gauging her every reaction, I drew closer until we were as near to each other as we had been when she leapt away. She was staring at my skin and my eyes, and quite suddenly she reached out again and touched my face.
"Not alive! " That was the horrifying perception that came from her silently. "Changed into something. But NOT ALIVE. " Quietly I said no. That was not right. And I sent a cool torrent of images to her, a procession of glimpses of what my existence had become. Bits, pieces of the fabric of the nighttime Paris, the sense of a blade cutting through the world soundlessly. With a little hiss she let out her breath. The pain balled its fist in her, opened its claw. She swallowed, sealing her lips against it, her eyes veritably burning into me. She knew now these were not sensations, these communications, but that they were thoughts.
"How then? " she demanded. And without questioning what I meant to do I gave her the tale link by link, the shattered window through which I'd been torn by the ghostly figure who had stalked me at the theater, the tower and the exchange of blood. I revealed to her the crypt in which I slept, and its treasure, my wanderings, my powers, and above all, the nature of the thirst. The taste of blood and the feel of blood, and what it meant for all passion, all greed to be sharpened in that one desire, and that one desire to be satisfied over and over with the feeding and the death. The pain ate at her but she no longer felt it. Her eyes were all that was left of her as she stared at me. And though I didn't mean to reveal all these things, I found I had taken hold of her and was turning so that the light of the carriages crashing along the quaff below fell full on my face. Without taking my eyes from her, I reached for the silver candelabra on the windowsill, and lifting it I slowly bent the metal, working it with my fingers into loops and twists. The candle fell to the floor. Her eyes rolled up into her head. She slipped backwards and away from me, and as she caught the curtains of the bed in her left hand, the blood came up out of her mouth. It was coming from her lungs in a great silent cough. She was slipping down on her knees, and the blood was all over the side of the draped bed. I looked at the twisted silver thing in my hands, the idiotic loops that meant nothing, and I let it drop. And I stared at her, her struggling against unconsciousness and pain, and wiping her mouth suddenly in sluggish gestures, like a vomiting drunk, on the bedclothes, as she sank unable to support herself to the floor. I was standing over her. I was watching her, and her momentary pain meant nothing in light of the vow that I was speaking to her now. No words again, just the silent thrust of it, and the question, more immense than could ever be put into words, Do you want to come with me now? DO YOU WANT TO COME WITH ME INTO THIS NOW? I hide nothing from you, not my ignorance, not my fear, not the simple terror that if I try I might fail. I do not even know if it is mine to give more than once, or what is the price of giving it, but I will risk this for you, and we will discover it together, whatever the mystery and the terror, just as I've discovered alone all else. With her whole being she said Yes.