But the most beguiling aspect of my explorations was that I heard the thoughts of these people, just as I had heard the evil servant whom I killed. Unhappiness, misery, expectation. These were currents in the air, some weak, some frighteningly strong, some no more than a glimmer gone before I knew the source.
But I could not, strictly speaking, read minds.
Most trivial thought was veiled from me, and when I lapsed into my own considerations, even the strongest passions did not intrude. In sum, it was intense feeling that carried thought to me and only when I wished to receive it, and there were some minds that even in the heat of anger gave me nothing.
These discoveries jolted me and almost bruised me, as did the common beauty everywhere I looked, the splendor in the ordinary. But I knew perfectly well there was an abyss behind it into which I might quite suddenly and helplessly drop.
After all, I wasn't one of these warm and pulsing miracles of complication and innocence. They were my victims.
Time to leave the village. I'd learned enough here. But just before I left, I performed one final act of daring. I couldn't help myself. I just had to do it.
Pulling up the high collar of my red cloak, I went into the inn, sought a corner away from the fire, and ordered a glass of wine. Everyone in the little place gave me the eye, but not because they knew there was a supernatural being in their midst. They were merely glancing at the richly dressed gentleman! And for twenty minutes I remained, testing it even further. No one, not even the man who served me, detected anything! Of course I didn't touch the wine. One whiff of it and I knew that my body could not abide it. But the point was, I could fool mortals! I could move among them!
I was jubilant when I left the inn. As soon as I reached the woods, I started to run. And then I was running so fast that the sky and the trees had become a blur. I was almost flying.
Then I stopped, leapt, danced about. I gathered up stones and threw them so far I could not see them land. And when I saw a fallen tree limb, thick and full of sap, I picked it up and broke it over my knee as if it were a twig.
I shouted, then sang at the top of my lungs again. I collapsed on the grass laughing.
And then I rose, tore off my cloak and my sword, and commenced to turn cartwheels. I turned cartwheels just like the acrobats at Renaud's. And then I somersaulted perfectly. I did it again, and this time backwards, and then forward, and then I turned double somersaults and triple somersaults, and leapt straight up in the air some fifteen feet off the ground before landing squarely on my feet, somewhat out of breath, and wanting to do these tricks some more.
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But the morning was coming.
Only the subtlest change in the air, the sky, but I knew it as if Hell's Bells were ringing. Hell's Bells calling the vampire home to the sleep of death. Ah, the melting loveliness of the sky, the loveliness of the vision of dim belfries. And an odd thought came to me, that in hell the light of the fires would be so bright it would be like sunlight, and this would be the only sunlight I would ever see again.
But what have I done? I thought. I didn't ask for this, I didn't give in. Even when Magnus told me I was dying, I fought him, and yet I am hearing Hell's Bells now.
Well, who gives a damn?
When I reached the Churchyard, quite ready for the ride home, something distracted me.
I stood holding the rein of my horse and looking at the small field of graves and could not quite figure what it was. Then again it came, and I knew. I felt a distinct presence in the churchyard.
I stood so still I heard the blood thundering in my veins.
It wasn't human, this presence! It had no scent. And there were no human thoughts coming from it. Rather it seemed veiled and defended and it knew I was here. It was watching me.
Could I be imagining this?
I stood listening, looking. A scattering of gray tombstones poked through the snow. And far away stood a row of old crypts, larger, ornamented, but just as ruined as the stones.
It seemed the presence lingered somewhere near the crypts, and then I felt it distinctly as it moved towards the enclosing trees.
"Who are you!" I demanded. I heard my voice like a knife. "Answer me!" I called out even louder.
I felt a great tumult in it, this presence, and I was certain that it was moving away very rapidly.
I dashed across the churchyard after it, and I could feel it receding. Yet I saw nothing in the barren forest. And I realized I was stronger than it, and that it had been afraid of me!
Well, fancy that. Afraid of me.
And I had no idea whether or not it was corporeal, vampire the same as I was, or something without a body.
"Well, one thing is sure," I said. "You're a coward!"
Tingling in the air. The forest seemed to breathe for an instant.