There was never the least possibility of my choosing anyone but Gil to be my sustenance, my source of life.
I knew, of course, that I would have to be subtle about it. I couldn't just happen to mention one night, while we were slipping our clothes off, that I wanted to try a new variation. ‘By the way, Gil, I'm a vampire, and tonight I'd like to suck a little of your blood.’ Sometimes, you just can't communicate by telling the truth. It's no good being honest with someone if they can't possibly believe what you say, and are bound to treat it either as a bizarre joke or a sign of madness. I knew that even if Gil were to say: ‘Hey, that's okay. I like it; let's do it’—which he never would, because it wasn't his style at all—he wouldn't really be consenting, because he'd have taken entirely the wrong inference from the words. So I knew I had to approach the issue in a different way. I knew that I'd first have to show him, in order to widen his conceptual horizons to take in things he'd never dreamed of, before he'd be capable of making any kind of decision himself. In order to put him in a position where he could offer his sincere and meaningful consent, I'd first have to suck his blood without any warning at all. It sounds paradoxical, I know, but as Dr Gray is fond of sadly pointing out, there are such things as moral paradoxes, no matter how much we would like to believe that there aren't.
When the hunger grew to the point where I had to satisfy it, I made my move. I planned the whole thing very carefully, because I wanted him to be in the right sort of mood. I wanted it to be special. I decided that it ought to be his flat rather than my room, because I wanted him to feel at home, and I didn't want the beautiful feelings which he was going to experience—which would certainly be better than any he'd ever experienced before—to be undermined by his having to get up and walk home through the damp and icy night afterwards. So I volunteered to cook him a meal—a big meal.
'What's the occasion?’ he said. ‘My birthday isn't till March.'
'Birthdays are accidental,’ I told him. ‘They're just things we inherit, like Christmas and Easter. We ought to save our real celebrations for commemorating things we do—decisions we make that change the course of our lives.'
'I haven't made any decisions,’ he said, raising his eyebrows to show that he was only joking and knew perfectly well that I was talking about something I'd decided.
'You will,’ I told him. ‘You don't know it yet, but you will.'
I was glad to see that he got ever so slightly anxious, wondering whether I was planning to hustle him into an engagement, or tell him that I was pregnant.
'You're not going to make me into a vegetarian,’ he said, choosing the least threatening and most jokey alternative. ‘I don't care how big the meal is, and how delicious, it won't make me abandon meat for ever. I love animals, no matter what the animal-rights people may suspect, and what I love about them best of all is the way they taste when they're roasted. Don't get me wrong—I'll eat your nut cutlet or your green lasagne, and enjoy every mouthful, but I'll still be an unrepentant heretic the morning after.'
'I wouldn't dream of trying to wean you away from flesh and blood,’ I assured him, more sincerely than he knew. ‘In fact, I'm going to roast some leg of lamb and eat it with you. I'm going on a new diet, to gain weight. I'm fed up with iron tablets and people thinking I'm anorexic. I'm going to demonstrate that I can eat just as heartily as anyone else. By Christmas, I'm going to be disgustingly fat. You'll probably go off me completely, and you'll be longing to have the old Anne back again, to feel her hips and touch her cheekbones—but it'll be too late.'
'It'd take a hell of a lot of lambs to make you fat by Christmas,’ he said. ‘Not to mention a litter of sucking pigs and a sizeable herd of best Texan steers. I bet you a dollar that you can't get to one-twenty pounds by the end of February.'
'What's that in real money and good honest stones?’ I said.
'About fifty-five pence and eight stone eight,’ he said promptly, just to show me what a mathematical wizard he was.
'Make it a round fifty pee and an even hundredweight,’ I said, ‘and I'll make it by the end of January.'
'Fifty pees aren't round,’ he pointed out. ‘They have seven sides, though there's no earthly reason why they should. I also can't imagine why your crazy antique system of weights calls a hundredweight a hundredweight when it has a hundred and twelve pounds in it, but you have a bet. I'll even buy a set of bathroom scales, so that you don't have to stand naked on the one outside the drugstore—sorry, the chemist's—and put a coin in the slot before we can figure out who won.'
And so the vital tryst was made, as easily as that.
For me, it was an appointment with destiny, because I knew that my decision to live wouldn't mean a thing—that it couldn't even count as a decision—until I actually began to satisfy my new-found hunger.
And though he didn't know it yet, it was an appointment with destiny for Gil, too, because the inevitable result of his choosing to feed me with his life's blood—and I had no doubt that he would choose to do that, once he'd had a taste of the inexpressible joy of the true joining of flesh to flesh—would be that he too, in his own good time, would have to make the same decision I had.
He'd have to decide whether he was going to be a vampire, and live, or whether he was going to be a victim, and die.
9
I tried not to leave anything to chance. I didn't just take it for granted that I'd know what to do, and exactly how to go about it, when I started to feed off Gil's blood. I was careful to ask Maldureve whether there was any special knack to it.
By this time, Maldureve was able to walk abroad in cloudy daylight, free from the shadows. Solidity was good for him. He was a very handsome man, but he wasn't like Gil. He was gaunt and bony; he looked like a man who had undergone terrible experiences, had borne his troubles with grace and dignity, and had come through it all stronger. He had learned the art of equanimity, and knew himself as well as any man alive—or so it seemed to me, lost as I was in hero-worship.
The wan white winter light suited him far better than the yellow glare of summer sun could ever have done, even if he hadn't had reason enough to shun the unbearable glare of the sun. His skin was like ivory, paler than mine, and his hair was uncannily streaked with polished silver. His eyes were deep-set and brooding; I knew how easily they might have seemed stark and menacing, but when he looked down at me they were clouded with tenderness.
It was good to be able to meet him by day. It put our relationship on a more secure basis. There were still the thrilling nights, when I got up at three or four in the morning to go out to the Marquis of Membury's Garden in search of him, but it was pleasant to be able to broaden our acquaintance by slipping into the trees on the way back from a lecture, or after one of Dr Gray's tutorials. He couldn't always be there, but I would often find him waiting for me, patiently, beneath a leafless tree. He didn't look out of place there, even though he always wore his black cloak.
I knew by virtue of its texture that Maldureve's cloak must be very warm and cosy, but he never huddled within it, or shivered when he threw back its folds to take me in his arms, the way Gil would have done. Cold was nothing to Maldureve, and he didn't mind at all when I wanted to part the cloak in order to put my hand inside, over his beating heart. The suit he wore underneath was quite modern and perfectly ordinary; I could easily have believed it if I'd found a St Michael label inside it. He never wore a waistcoat, only a cotton shirt.
'I need blood,’ I told him, half proudly and half apologetically. ‘I'm becoming like you. I have to take blood from someone, and I need you to tell me how.'
He looked down at me, and I could see the sadness in his eyes. He knew that it would soon be over between us, that he'd have to move on. I hoped he wouldn't pick on anyone I knew, but I couldn't make up my mind whether it would be better for him to go away or stay on campus. In some ways, I knew, a clean break might be better. On the other hand, it would be nice to see him again sometimes, to be able to talk to him as one vampire t
o another, even though we couldn't do it any more. In fact, it would be necessary as well as nice; there was still so much I needed to learn about the borderlands, about the mysterious owls, about the prospect of immortality. He could teach me; he was the only tutor available. I needed more from him now than words of love.
'I've shown you how,’ he said. His voice was no longer as eerie as it had once been. Now that he was solid, it emerged from his mouth like anyone else's; it didn't have to sound so strangely inside my ear.
'But I don't know how you make the flesh change,’ I said plaintively. ‘I don't want to start sucking Gil's neck, expecting it to become fluid, and find that all I'm doing is sucking the sweat off his skin. I need to know how to do the magic.'
'It isn't magic,’ he told me. ‘It's our nature. Ours, my beautiful Anne—not just mine any longer. You feel the hunger, don't you? Your heart aches for the blood of others?'
'I feel it,’ I confessed. ‘But I'm not sure how to answer it, how to serve its need. Does my body know? Will it do it of its own accord?'
'Not quite,’ he said, touching his hand to my cheek, very gently. His fingers were long and very smooth. His were the sort of hands of which Dad would have said, half enviously, that they'd ‘never done a day's work in their lives'. Which, of course, they hadn't.
'You have to want it, beloved,’ Maldureve continued. ‘You have to want the blood very much indeed. The hunger isn't enough, on its own. You have to have the determination as well as the desire. If you doubt yourself, or if you can't bring yourself to do it, you'll fail—and the hunger will eat you instead.'
'I want it,’ I said, intensely. ‘I want it more than I ever imagined it was possible to want anything.'
The sadness came back into his face, and a shadow darkened his gaze. I knew that it wasn't just regret. I'd seen that look before—that slightly haunted look.
'You mustn't think, beloved, that ours is an easy existence,’ he said, as though it pained him to tell me, although he felt duty bound to do it.
'You will easily discover, if you have truly accepted your new nature, how to take blood. If doubt prevents you, simply think of me. Imagine yourself as a phantom of the shadows, and remember the joy that I have brought you. Only remember what I am to you, and you will quickly master the art of feeding. But you'll discover, too, that not all the things which you see with your enhanced senses are beautiful. The art of the invisible carries its own penalties. You'll learn to love the shadows, as I do, and to fuse your being with theirs, but you'll also catch sight of the things that hide in light: creatures with staring eyes and avid claws. You must learn to flee as well as to feed; your nature knows how, but for that too you must find the determination. If you doubt, or hesitate, the owls will seize you and drag you screaming into their region of the borderlands, where you would come to know the savage pain which is counterpart to the refined joy that I have shown you. I beg you, beloved, remember me. When you see the owls, think of me and what I was before you brought me forth into the world with your keen and needful vision. Flee from the owls; learn to hide from their angry sight.'
'Wouldn't you come and rescue me,’ I asked, ‘if I fell victim to the owls?’ It was, I suppose, a teasing question, intended to imply that he was, after all, my hero. He had rescued me once already from a fate worse than death.
'I could not come to you in their realm,’ he said, very soberly. The sadness of his tone felt suddenly desolate and chilly. ‘My trade is joy and inner strength; you have made me firm and let me walk in the gentle light of cloudy days, but the owls can't be wrestled or broken or torn. They are the predators, not you and I. We drink the sweet and heady blood of men, while they know no hunger at all, but theirs are the claws which rend and tear. The owls cage their victims in light, and ply them with such torments that their hearts break and their minds are lost. Never look into the heart of light, beloved. Once you have seen the owls, you give them power over you. They will reach out for you, if you consent to their solidity.'
'But I can avoid them, can't I?’ I said, anxiously. 'You avoid them, don't you?'
'It's possible,’ he assured me. ‘Be on your guard, and you will learn the skills of evasion. Cleave to the darkest shadows, and their blinding light will never sear your eyes. Flee their touch, and their claws will never lacerate your flesh.'
I did wonder, as I left the wood, whether it was still possible to change my mind, but it was a purely hypothetical question. I had the determination to complement my hunger; my body had chosen life, and my mind was too reasonable to deny its choice. I wasn't really scared of the owls—how could I be, never having glimpsed them, not knowing what they were? I knew that Maldureve intended his warning to be taken seriously, but I also knew that he didn't want me to fail and die. He wanted me to succeed; he wanted me to be like him. Even though my blood would become useless to him, he wanted me to succeed, to become a companion instead of a lover.
Maldureve could have left me, of course. He could have stopped feeding on my blood, and let me use the iron tablets to build my red count back to normal levels. He could have found someone else whose blood he could drink while the hunger died away inside me and the fugitive pink gleam came back to my cheeks. He could have come back to me, after sufficient time had elapsed, for a brief reunion. It was still possible, at that point in time, for me to have the cake and eat it too, provided that I only had one slice at a time, at widely spaced intervals. I could have lived an almost normal life, trysting with my vampire lover once a year or so, for a few nights of delirious excitement, while he kept a troop of similar concubines for all the times in between. That way, we could have preserved our relationship over time, and kept it as it was. But that wasn't what either of us wanted. I didn't want a lover who'd visit me for a month or two every winter. I wanted something permanent, something that would transform me, something that would make me stronger. I didn't want to be forever becalmed in my thin, fearful, baby-Anne self. He wanted the same, because he had my best interests at heart. We were true lovers, who could be content with nothing less than excess.
Or so I thought at the time.
I don't regret my mistake; it was natural enough. I had to go through that phase, en route to maturity. It was only young blood: young and sweet and foolish blood.
The meal I cooked for Gil was a triumph. He gorged himself on the lamb, and so did I. The red wine was smooth and dry and gently intoxicating. Gil was excited, too, because of some minor breakthrough in his research. I couldn't concentrate on the details of it, but he didn't feel let down by my lack of understanding.
'Don't you ever worry about being infected by one of these viruses?’ I asked him, in the hope of putting up some show of intelligent interest.
'There's always a danger,’ he said, ‘but it's very small. Most viruses can't survive outside living cells for long—a matter of minutes, usually—and they're very vulnerable. My sterile technique is good; I'm never careless. Viners and Teresa are old hands at the game, so there's infinitely less chance of picking up a virus in the lab than there is in the dining room of one of the Halls, or a Union disco. Even if I did get infected, I probably wouldn't show any symptoms at all, except maybe a headache or a mild high, before my immune system got to grips with the invader and knocked it out. At the worst, I might have bad dreams, or mild and temporary sensory derangement—and what a golden opportunity for clinical observation that would be!'
'Knowing as much as you do about psychotropics must make you a bit sensitive,’ I said, contemplatively. ‘Every time you wake up with a hangover, do you have to ask yourself whether it was just the booze or a slip of the test tube? And then do you have to start taking notes, just in case?'
He laughed. ‘I'm reasonably robust,’ he assured me. ‘I never get headaches, except on long plane journeys. My immune system is in ace condition and my brain chemistry is in perfect working order. Knowledge is great armour against over-reaction.'
Pride, I thought, goeth before destruction, and haugh
ty manner before a fall. It was Dad's favourite proverb; he loved quoting it to the TV set, when someone he didn't approve of was holding forth to camera. There were a lot of people he didn't approve of. I wondered whether he'd approve of Gil, when the time came for introductions. Probably not—he and Mum would think Gil was too old for me, only after one thing, using me. Little did they know.
We were still pleasantly tipsy when we went to bed. We didn't bother to switch out the bedside light. I was a little self-conscious about that, but it was better than usual—the ordinary sex, I mean. I thought it was only fair to let him do his thing before I did mine, and he always stayed inside me for a little while afterwards, relaxing. I knew that would be the best time.
When the moment came for me to do what I had to do, I was very nervous. The hunger seemed to grow as the appointed time approached, and I could feel it taking hold of me, not painfully, but urgently and irresistibly. I did what Maldureve had suggested, and thought of him. I thought of the way it felt when he pressed his lips to my neck, and how my flesh felt while it was consumed by that unique, indescribable pleasure. I put myself in his place, trying to imagine what it might be like to give that pleasure instead of receiving it.
It didn't matter that I was underneath instead of on top; it didn't matter that Gil wasn't even paying attention, that he was lost in the borderlands of sleep, doubly drunk with wine and contentment.
He didn't start with alarm when it began to happen to him, when his flesh became fluid and his blood began to ooze into my mouth. I was certain that he felt the same kind of joy I had, the same unprecedented thrill, but he didn't seem to feel it consciously. He stirred and shifted, quite gently, as if he were trying to thrust himself further into me—his neck, I mean, not his prick—and I knew that his body was absolutely loving it, wherever his mind had wandered off to.
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