“I shook my head but she pressed even closer to me, lowering her lids so that her rich lashes almost brushed the roundness of her cheeks. ‘The secret is, Louis, that I want to kill him. I will enjoy it!’
“I knelt beside her, speechless, her eyes studying me as they’d done so often in the past; and then she said, ‘I kill humans every night. I seduce them, draw them close to me, with an insatiable hunger, a constant never-ending search for something… something, I don’t know what it is…’ She brought her fingers to her lips now and pressed her lips, her mouth partly open so I could see the gleam of her teeth. ‘And I care nothing about them — where they came from, where they would go — if I did not meet them on the way. But I dislike him! I want him dead and will have him dead. I shall enjoy it.’
“ ‘But Claudia, he is not mortal. He’s immortal. No illness can touch him. Age has no power over him. You threaten a life which might endure to the end of the world!’
“ ‘Ah, yes, that’s it, precisely!’ she said with reverential awe. ‘A lifetime that might have endured for centuries. Such blood, such power. Do you think I’ll possess his power and my own power when I take him?’
“I was enraged now. I rose suddenly and turned away from her. I could hear the whispering of humans near me. They were whispering of the father and the daughter, of some frequent sight of loving devotion. I realized they were talking of us.
“ ‘It’s not necessary,’ I said to her. ‘It goes beyond all need, all common sense, all…’
“ ‘What? Humanity? He’s a killer!’ she hissed. ‘Lone predator!’ She repeated his own term, mocking it. ‘Don’t interfere with me or seek to know the time I choose to do it, nor try to come between us.’
“She raised her hand now to hush me and caught mine in an iron grasp, her tiny fingers biting into my tight, tortured flesh. ‘If you do, you will bring me destruction by your interference. I can’t be discouraged.’
“She was gone then in a flurry of bonnet ribbons and clicking slippers. I turned, paying no attention to where I went, wishing the city would swallow me, conscious now of the hunger rising to overtake reason. I was almost loath to put an end to it. I needed to let the lust, the excitement blot out all consciousness, and I thought of the kill over and over and over, walking slowly up this street and down the next, moving inexorably towards it, saying, It’s a string which is pulling me through the labyrinth. I am not pulling the string. The string is pulling me… And then I stood in the Rue Conti listening to a dull thundering, a familiar sound. It was the fencers above in the salon, advancing on the hollow wooden floor, forward, back again, scuttling, and the silver zinging of the foils. I stood back against the wall, where I could see them through the high naked windows, the young men dueling late into the night, left arm poised like the arm of a dancer, grace advancing towards death, grace thrusting for the heart, images of the young Freniere now driving the silver blade forward, now being pulled by it towards hell. Someone had come down the narrow wooden steps to the street — a young boy, a boy so young he had the smooth, plump cheeks of a child; his face was pink and flushed from the fencing, and beneath his smart gray coat and ruffled shirt there was the sweet smell of cologne and salt. I could feel his heat as he emerged from the dim light of the stairwell. He was laughing to himself, talking almost inaudibly to himself, his brown hair falling down over his eyes as he went along, shaking his head, the whispers rising, then falling off. And then he stopped short, his eyes on me. He stared, and his eyelids quivered and he laughed quickly, nervously. ‘Excuse me!’ he said now in French. ‘You gave me a start!’ And then, just as he moved to make a ceremonial bow and perhaps go around me, he stood still, and the shock spread over his flushed face. I could see the heart beating in the pink flesh of his cheeks, smell the sudden sweat of his young, taut body.
“ ‘You saw me in the lamplight,’ I said to him. ‘And my face looked to you like the mask of death.’
“His lips parted and his teeth touched and involuntarily he nodded, his eyes dazed.
“ ‘Pass by!’ I said to him. ‘Fast! ”
The vampire paused, then moved as if he meant to go on. But he stretched his long legs under the table and, leaning back, pressed his hands to his head as if exerting a great pressure on his temples.
The boy, who had drawn himself up into a crouched position, his hands hugging his arms, unwound slowly. He glanced at the tapes and then back at the vampire. “But you killed someone that night,” he said.
“Every night,” said the vampire.
“Why did you let him go then?” asked the boy.
“I don’t know,” said the vampire, but it did not have the tone of truly I don’t know, but rather, let it be. “You look tired,” said the vampire. “You look cold.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the boy quickly. “The room’s a little cold; I don’t care about that. You’re not cold, are you?”
“No.” The vampire smiled and then his shoulders moved with silent laughter.
A moment passed in which the vampire seemed to be thinking and the boy to be studying the vampire’s face. The vampire’s eyes moved to the boy’s watch.
“She didn’t succeed, did she?” the boy asked softly.
“What do you honestly think?” asked the vampire. He had settled back in his chair. He looked at the boy intently.
“That she was… a
s you said, destroyed,” said the boy; and he seemed to feel the words, so that he swallowed after he’d said the word destroyed. “Was she?” he asked.
“Don’t you think that she could do it?” asked the vampire.
“But he was so powerful. You said yourself you never knew what powers he had, what secrets he knew. How could she even be sure how to kill him? How did she try?”
The vampire looked at the boy for a long time, his expression unreadable to the boy, who found himself looking away, as though the vampire’s eyes were burning lights. “Why don’t you drink from that bottle in your pocket?” asked the vampire. “It will make you warm.”
“Oh, that…” said the boy. “I was going to. I just…”
The vampire laughed. “You didn’t think it was polite!” he said, and he suddenly slapped his thigh.
“That’s true,” the boy shrugged, smiling now; and he took the small flask out of his jacket pocket, unscrewed the gold cap, and took a sip. He held the bottle, now looking at the vampire.