by Mari Biella
“The first thing I was aware of was a thought: that I had died, that this was death. I believed that she had killed me, and that the impressions that were slowly returning to me were those of the Heaven I still yearned for. I was aware of lying back against a soft surface, and of the sweet, heavy lethargy of my limbs. I felt a hand rest gently against my cheek, just for a moment, and moaned. Then I opened my eyes.
“Pietra was sitting near me, leaning over me, and there were tears in her eyes.
“ ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I hunted you because I saw the desperation in you. To kill one such as you would be much less of a crime than to murder one who was full of life and hope. Do you realise what I am?’
“And, I found, I did – all at once, and despite the fog that lingered in my brain, I understood it perfectly. The nights that she had come to me and drunk from my veins, the deaths and the disappearances ... she was a being that my reason told me could not exist, a creature that rose from the tomb and gorged on the blood of the living. I had heard such tales, and had laughed at them – but they were true. I had proof of it here, now.
“ ‘It was your bad luck to be in that pensione,’ she continued. ‘When I saw you, I saw that you were facing death. What crime is it, to kill a man who is dying in any case? Still I held back, until my hunger became stronger than my conscience – and then I fed on you, and fed again, and would have killed you.’
“ ‘Why don’t you kill me now?’ I asked.
“She placed her hand over her heart, as if it pained her, and a small tear spilled from her eye. ‘I have no desire to kill you. Why don’t you run? The door is open, and nobody will stop you.’
“I glanced over at the door, and dimly imagined tearing away from this place, stumbling back to the pensione, and never seeing Pietra again. But suddenly that seemed worse, far worse, than dying swiftly at her hands. I turned back to her.
“ ‘Kill me now,’ I pleaded. ‘Do it, and set me free from this suffering.’
“She came closer then, and lay down next to me. Her eyes were huge, luminous with tears, and her beauty was more astonishing than ever. She leaned towards me and kissed me gently on the lips, and her kiss awoke memories of those other occasions, those nights when she had come to me and tasted my blood. It should have aroused disgust in me; instead, it aroused only a sweet languor, a dreaminess that I recognised as the prelude to death. Her lips moved along my jaw and down to my throat, and I lay back against the sofa, waiting, waiting ... and then I moaned as I felt her hesitate. In the next instant she tore herself away from me and shrank to the other side of the sofa, turning away so that I could not see her face.
“ ‘I cannot do it,’ she murmured. ‘I have killed again and again, without mercy, but I cannot kill you. I have felt your suffering, and I have lived it. I cannot destroy you now.’
“ ‘It would be an act of mercy. Do it!’
“ ‘I cannot!’
“For a moment we were both silent. I lay still, listening to her harsh breathing. Then she turned to me again, and her blue eyes met mine.
“ ‘There is another way,’ she murmured.
“ ‘What?’
“ ‘You could become like me,’ she said. ‘I could make you into a being that will never die. But everlasting life comes at a price. You must walk always in the shadow of death, as I do. You must kill or die. You must be a stranger to all men, one who – if his fellow beings knew what he was – would arouse only fear and disgust. If there is a God, then you must surely be damned.’
“And in that moment I saw what her life had been since the sickness had claimed her. She was a being who had existed for years, for centuries perhaps. She had watched as time slipped away, as mortality took those she loved, and as the world evolved and became ever more strange and alien to her. She had become a relic of the past, and in order to prolong her existence she had been forced to shed the blood of the innocent. I saw the pain of her existence, the suffering and the loneliness of it.
“But I saw too the endless darkness of non-existence, the absolute blotting out of self – and, I found, I feared that far more.
“ ‘Do it,’ I whispered.
“I believe she hesitated even then – but only for a second. Then she moved slowly towards me, and I closed my eyes as her lips brushed against the sensitive skin of my throat. A moment passed, a moment that seemed an eternity. Then she bit, and the now-familiar pain coursed through my body; and in that moment I experienced one final moment of doubt. What was happening to me? What would I become?
“And then the heavy, dreamy lethargy I had felt before returned, and I closed my eyes. All doubts and questions dissolved, past and future dwindled to nothing, and I felt at peace.”