Part 26 (1/2)

I don't know how long we stood there, me fighting impotently, her feasting on me, but she did not take much blood.

Then she raised her head and released me so abruptly that I fell backward against the bed.

”Come, Joanna,” Illona called sweetly and stretched out beside me. Her face was flushed from even that small amount of blood, her breath warm against my neck. ”Come. Drink. When it is time, I will give you the privilege of her death. ”

I know I begged for my life then, but Illona did not notice me. Her attention was fixed on Joanna, her intensity drawing the smaller woman forward. As she moved toward the bed, Illona raised my hands above my head. Only when the second woman's teeth had opened a different wound did I hear Illona say, ”A taste only, sister. It will be days before he returns.”

Whatever relief I might have taken from that last comment vanished as she added, ”Then we will feast.”

She smiled, her incisors long and white against the red of her lips. ”Oh, yes. You welcomed his touch, did you not?” She ran her hands over my cheek, slapping me when I tried to look away. ”Do you think we are so different from him?”

Of course they were! I stared at the creature, convinced that she was insane.

”Once we were male and female. Now we are only takers, and you only exist to give. We cannot love. We only devour.”

I looked from Illona to Joanna, standing so silently beside her. ”Is this really true?” I asked, begging her for the answer I wanted to hear. In our nights together, it had seemed that the creature they called Dracula, the man I called Tepes, had truly loved me.

Joanna did not answer, but when she looked at me, I thought I saw some softening in her expression, a look almost of sympathy in her eyes.

I will not speak of the nights that followed, only say that they were careful with me. Joanna especially saw to my comfort, making sure my room-my cell-was warm and my food adequate.

The fall from my window was long and steep. I had always feared heights. The door was barred. In time, I learned to live on their cycle, sleeping by day, wary at night. I learned too to accept their silent comings and goings, as they drifted in and out of my locked roam on tendrils of fog and dust.

Some nights they came to me, their hands caressing me, their lips against the wounds, drinking until I nearly swooned, then forcing me to drink from them. In the beginning, I gagged. Later their blood tasted sweet, the nourishment it gave relished by my soul. On other nights, I stayed alone, pacing my chamber, inventing hopeless, useless plans for escape.

Once, Joanna came and, after building up the fire, sat with me, taking my hand so timidly that I did not pull away. ”Tell me about your world,” she whispered, her voice trembling, her dark eyes glancing toward the door as if she were frightened that Illona would hear and come.

I did, in the same low tone. She asked about the clothing, more about the music, the books and plays. I did the best I could, telling her the stories I had read, singing the songs I knew. Though t did not dare say it, I knew the truth about her.

She was a prisoner here. Now I understand why. Then, I only pitied her. It was preferable to pitying myself.

Dracula returned by night, sitting beside the gypsies on the cart. I recall that as they rode up to the walls, they were all singing. It seemed so strange to hear his voice mingling with theirs. I have never thought of the women as human, but I thought of him then (and still!) that way. It is his will, his human will. It is too strong to be overpowered, even in death.

The gypsies unloaded the box of earth that made it possible for him to travel, and left. I have often wondered how he can be so trusting of those men or they so honorable when he is at his most helpless, yet the bond has existed for centuries. He gives them gold, that is true. But even if he did not, they would die .

for him.

As I leaned out the window, it never occurred to me to cry out for help. I don't understand my silence to this day.

Perhaps I knew it was useless to place my hope in his servants, perhaps I already knew that the life I had lived bef ore coming here had ended with his kiss.

The women entered my chamber as silently as always. I felt their presence behind me and turned from the window.

Joanna, as ever, hung back in a subservient position. Illona moved closer. ”Do I die now?” I asked.”You do,” Illona responded. I have never seen such an evil expression, such a sardonic smile. ”Help me,” Illona called to Joanna, as she began to remove my clothes.

Joanna hung back. ”Let him have her,” she said.

”Him!” Illona laughed derisively and went on, ripping the last of my clothes from me. When I was naked, she lifted a gown from the bed.

Once it must have been beautiful, for the lace was still delicate. But age had destroyed some of the most intricate designs. Once it must have been white, but now it was yellow and there were brown spots of mildew on the lining of the bodice. The laces in the back were rotted, so the top could only stay up if I stood very straight. When she'd finished Illona put the veil on me, more a web of dust and tiny seed pearls than the lace that it had once been.

”My wedding dress,” she said. ”Ideal, don't you think, for this profane marriage.”

”Marriage?” I asked dully.

”To Joanna.”

Joanna shook her head. I began to understand what made her so reluctant. She feared Illona, but she feared Dracula as well. Sometimes it seems that only fear gives her life.

”Then she is mine, as you were, Joanna, remember?” With a cry that might have been despair, or rage, Joanna vanished from the room, though I sensed her presence, safely watching, unable to act.

Illona tore at her neck; she gripped my head; forcing me to drink as she had before. As I struggled, he came, his bellow of rage filling the room, the strength of his presence more potent than both of the women's had been. Illona gripped my hair and turned me toward the door, forcing me to look at him.

Her hand curved around my throat; her nails just touched my flesh.

”Let her go!” Dracula ordered.

”So you can take a bride after me? No, husband. Never.”

Later, he told me that his death in her arms was the most exquisite act of ecstasy he had ever experienced, the little death, as the French call it, extended into a momentary blackness of real death, then the sudden wrenching instant of rebirth. I felt none of the glory, all of the fear. Indeed, the last moments of my struggle raised so much dust from the crumbling veil that my last human act was to sneeze.

Then her nails dug into my flesh, ripping at my throat like some animal's claws, and the darkness fell over me, profound and silent as a winter night.

I dreamed of life as life left me.

How I would sit and watch my hair glowing like gold threads in the sun.

How I rode with my brothers through the hills, my stallion white and powerful between my legs.

How I danced at court, laughing too frantically at the jests, crying in my mother's arms at night because no one loved me.

How I dreamed of another world, cities, countries, oceans. How I lay in Tepes's arms, my body trembling at his touch, thrilling to the taste of his blood.

Illona denied it all to me. Her nature is utterly dark, with not a ray of her past life able to pierce its blackness. How I loathe her. How I envy her freedom.

And then there was nothing but darkness and, for a moment only, the promise of life everlasting. I sensed it, desired it-- peace, incredible and eternal peace!

It abandoned me as it had the vampire women. I returned to life as suddenly as I had died. My eyes opened. Though the room was undoubtedly dim, lit as it was by just a single candle, the brightness of it hurt my eyes. I lay across the knees of a young man who was was.h.i.+ng the blood from my neck and chest. The warm water reeked of its scent as the room reeked of his fear. It reeked of his pa.s.sion as well, for sometime during my death, the tattered gown had been removed and I lay naked before him.

Had he touched me while I was helpless? I was certain of it from the blush on his cheeks, the way he looked only at my face. I knew he could not help himself. I held up my hand and saw its incredible pallor: my legs felt thinner, longer, my hair when I touched it finer than before. In life, I had been beautiful. Death had made me exquisite.

I pushed away from him and stood, but there was no reflection in the mirror beside the bed. With a moan of anguish, I turned toward him and saw him looking from the mirror to me and back.

Though the others do not speak of it, I know there is a moment of choice for our kind, the moment when we decide how terrible a creature we have become. Do we kill? Do we use? Do we feast on ecstasy? I know this now, but Illona made certain I would be a killer like her.

If there had been no mirror, if the boy had not known what I was, if he had not shook with terror as he backed away from me, if he had not turned and bolted for the door, pounding when he discovered it locked, my pity might have conquered my hunger. I might have even loved him.

Instead, the need for blood hit, a terrible searing agony in the center of my body, and I moved toward him. Unable to stop myself, I gripped his hands, pressed his body close to mine, feeling his pitiful struggles to escape as I drank. And drank. And felt him die.

Ah, the magnificence of that moment when you realize that you have consumed death! The potency of it! The fulfillment!