I raised a hand to lift a curtain aside - and hesitated, telling myself that
I was being ridiculous, that Dunya was at-that very moment with Zsuzsanna in
her room, that her stout little presence and the garlic ensured that no harm
would come to them.
Yet I could not shake the premonition of danger.
Timidly, I pulled the curtain back an inch and peered through the crack.
The moon was waning, and the night no longer so bright, but my eyes were accustomed
to the darkness. I detected nothing on the grounds between our bedrooms, and
was just about to let go the curtain and chide myself for being unnecessarily
anxious when I realised that Zsuzsanna's shutters had been flung back.
I strained harder to see, but in the darkness, could only be sure that the
shutters were open. It was impossible to judge whether the sash had been thrown
up. I leaned closer, nose almost touching the window.
A dark, growling form hurled itself out of the shadows and struck the glass
with such force that it cracked scarcely an inch in front of my face.
I screamed in surprise. The attacker fell back, but gathered itself and once
again charged, pressing against the glass its snout and a long muzzleful of
sharp yellow teeth, bared in a hideous snarl.
I dropped the curtain and ran for the door, by which time Arkady had already
thrown it open. To my surprise he brandished a pistol, as though he had stood
by ready and armed for just such an emergency. He threw his arm up to push me
away from the danger, and, following my terrified gaze, pulled back the curtain
and aimed the weapon just as the wolf lunged for the third time, again cracking
the pane and rattling the window in its sash.
He fired into the darkness, staggering slightly as the weapon kicked in his
hand; the pane shattered with a high, crystalline tinkle. I expected to hear
a yelp, a shrill whine, but all without was silence. I was too frightened to
get close enough to peer out, but Arkady's quizzical, uncertain expression said
that the animal had simply vanished. He leaned forward and peered carefully
out the window, and I stepped as close behind him as I could, mindful with my
bare feet of the glass, and craned my neck to see over his shoulder.
There was no evidence whatsoever of the attacker, save for the shattered, saliva-smeared
glass.
He turned towards me then, and I confess that my nerves gave way at that moment,
and I did something I had never done before in front of my husband: I wept like
an hysterical, terrified child. I know it worried him terribly to see me like
that, and I wanted to stop at once, as he had been through so much himself recently - but
it was some minutes before I was able to get control of myself. Sobbing, I begged
him to take us away to Vienna. He promised he would, but I know he said it merely
to quiet me. He could not at that moment entirely meet my gaze.
Ion and Ilona came knocking at the door, in response to the gunshot; Arkady
dismissed them brusquely, then brought out the laudanum in a desperate effort
to calm me, but drank more of it than I.
How can I permit myself to sleep? No normal creature could have lunged
two floors
to strike the glass. I am so frightened. Frightened to think
what will become of Zsuzsanna; frightened to think what will become of my child.
I have been warned.
No, worse - I have been overtly threatened. I know this, for in that terrible
instant when my face was separated from the snarling wolf's by less than an
inch of glass, I saw deep into his wild, intelligent eyes.
Hungry, compelling eyes; eyes of darkest forest green.
He knows that I have found him out, that I understand about Zsuzsanna. That
I am trying to persuade Arkady to take us away. Dear God, somehow he knows,
and with a mother's instinct
I
know that he will never let me or my
husband or child leave this place.
* * *
Zsuzsanna Tsepesh's Diary
17 April.
The shutters are all open.
I was too weak to close them, too weak to replace the garlic, too weak to maintain
the charade. It is just as well; now, from my bed, I watch the first rays of
the sun pour through the window like melted butter, spilling across the grey,
silent room, over sleeping Dunya, over the mounds of my legs beneath the quilt.
My strong, perfect legs.
The light is so radiant, so golden, so bitterly beautiful that my throat aches
with tears unwept. This is the last dawn I will ever see.
Through some peculiar resolve of will, I have found the strength to write.
I am determined to leave behind the record of my passage.
But for whom?
I am dying. I know that my lungs will cease to breathe, my heart to beat; yet
I am assured that the end I confront is not truly death, nor the existence to
which I go truly life. For I know all that he knows, and my melancholy at the
thought of passing from this brief, unhappy, crippled existence is tempered
by a growing awe, a growing joy: my shroud will be a chrysalis, from which I
shall emerge beautiful, perfected, immortal.
Our communion is complete. Last night, I knew when Dunya would fall beneath
his spell, knew the precise moment when he would arrive. I had freed myself
from the restraint of my nightgown and was waiting for him by the window inside
the shaft of moonglow, lifting my arms before my wondering, wide eyes, beguiled
by the radiance of that silvery light on my naked skin: already I could see
sparks of pink and gold, the beginnings of that glorious, opalescent fire in
my own flesh.
Out of that magnificent brightness he appeared beside me. I said nothing, but
lifted my long, heavy hair from my neck and presented myself to him, knowing
it would be the last time he would sup there. He wound my hair tightly round
his hand and pulled my head back, back, with the other hand pressing my waist
to his.
His teeth found the tiny, tender wounds again; I shivered as they sank, quickly,
neatly, into my flesh, shivered again as his tongue began to work, rapidly at
first, to encourage the flow, then slowly, voluptuously, but drawing hard, with
such pressure that I moaned at the pain.
Despite the discomfort, I did not struggle, but permitted myself to fall at
once into that deep, delicious swoon, my heart racing with excitement at the
knowledge (his, and now mine) that he would feed ruthlessly, beyond satiation,
that he would once again take me to that uniquely sensual precipice at the threshold
of death
and then beyond, across the great abyss.
I sensed his pleasure, too - the pleasure I had known myself two nights before,
the ecstasy of utter power over another's life and death, of ultimate seduction,
of pure animal hunger appeased: the fierce, bloody joy of the hunt and the kill.
And he knew my ravishment; and even, submerged, my slight, bitter remorse at
leaving this life without having tasted fully of its delights.
Thus it was he stopped, having drunk but briefly (and now, I know, sufficiently).
I whimpered as he withdrew, but fell silent as he lifted crimson, dripping lips
to my ear and whispered, Zsuzsa
I heard the worlds contained within that single word. I heard his question
veiled therein, and in my sigh, he heard consent.
He let go my hair; it swung, soft and loose, against my bare back. The hand
at my waist eased its grip and I staggered back, struggling for balance, but
not yet weak, not yet drained of strength.
Yet he had drunk enough to be uncannily powerful. With the hand that had held
my hair, he loosened the clothing that separated him from me - not freeing himself
entirely, but revealing again the broad expanse of chest, unscarred, free of
any sign of the wound which united us.
Revealing far, far more.
Oh, I have lived a sheltered life, yes, but I had read of
le petit mort,
the little death, and wondered at the term. I laughed as I reached for the instrument
of my execution - albescent, as cool and smooth and hard beneath my fingertips
as marble. Shuddering at my spidery touch, he joined softly in my laughter,
for we saw in our shared mind's eye the same vision, evoked by my own thoughts
from his ancient memory:
The forest of staked dead, four centuries ago. The adulterous and unrepentant
wives he had ordered to death in his capacity as
voievod.
How they
had shrieked! How they had fought when forced down on their backs against the
muddy spring ground outside the castle, while the smiling, appreciative prince
watched. Five burly
rumini
per woman to spread her like a star: Two
to pin writhing torso and arms down, two more, one gripping each kicking calf,
to part the legs wide.
And only one to thrust the pine stake (ten feet long, wider than a strong man's
arm and generously oiled, sharpened to permit rapid entry, but the tip blunted
just enough so death might not come too blessedly quick) up between those whoring
thighs.
There are none he hates worse than the faithless; none he loves more than the
loyal.
Oh, the screams, as justice penetrated the traitorous! Oh, the strangled cries
as the poles were then hoisted aloft, anchored in the ground, and the weight
of the body allowed to more deeply drive the punishment home! Men who dared
betray the
voievod
met their fate in similarly metaphoric fashion,
gored through the anus. Sometimes the offenders were suspended for days, by
which time the stakes extruded from stomachs, or throats, or sometimes, most
elegantly, from gaping, death-stilled mouths.
The image filled him with sudden fire, which then engulfed and consumed me.
At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be so thoroughly pierced; to open
and feel him emerge like a blooming calyx between the petals of my parted lips.
His hand was still upon the small of my naked back, but gentle; I pressed against
him, anxious, impatient, threw my arms around him, pleaded with him, begged
him to take me, now, now,
now.
He did not move. His lips, dark with my blood, curved slyly upwards; heavy
lids lowered over those brilliant and alluring eyes. He seemed as young and
handsome then as Kasha - no, even younger, and more innocently beautiful, the
archangel, the light-bringer, before the Fall. He shook his head, and I understood.
He would not take me. I had been the seductress all along; I had summoned him
to me. He had broken the covenant only at my insistence, because of my need,
and if he were to break mortal, familial taboos to consummate our marriage in
the flesh, it would have to be my doing, as well,
I
would have to take
him.
He remained motionless, a marble statue as I locked my fingers behind his muscular
neck and hoisted myself aloft like one of the doomed adulteresses, pulling my
torso at first too high, then slowly easing downward until I discovered the
effective angle.
I locked my legs around him, and with a swift, violent motion, impaled myself.
Impaled myself. Again. Again.
He gripped my hips, his knifelike fingernails cutting into my flesh, and thrust
forward till he could fill me no farther. With a savagery that terrified and
tormented and delighted me, he tore at my neck with his teeth, transforming
the pinpricks there into gushing wounds. The warm river of blood overflowed
his hungry mouth and cascaded over my breast, my stomach, trickling down to
where we two were joined.
I writhed against him as he drank until my skin was sticky with blood; until
I was spent and throbbing with pleasure; until I was dizzy and faint and once
again overwhelmed by the peculiarly languid, ecstatic sense of death's approach.
My arms fell back, too weak to cling to his neck. He alone supported me, one
hand spread at my hips, the other between my shoulder blades.
At last, he withdrew from my neck, from between my legs, and lay me back on
the floor near the open window. I stared up at the sky, at the waning moon,
and the sheer blinding brightness of it pained my eyes, yet I could not tear
my gaze from its brilliant flashing-colour beauty. I saw colour everywhere:
in the shimmering, mother-of-pearl moon, in the stars, in the stand of evergreens
far beyond, which had never before been even visible to my naked gaze from this
distance. I could see the bright blues and reds in my quilt, see the green in
Vlad's eyes as he knelt to clean the congealing blood from my body with his
pink tongue. My vision in the darkness was keener, more remarkable than a raptors.
And I heard everything: every stirring in the forest outside, even Arkady's
snoring in the bedroom across the grounds from mine. I heard the soft movement
of sheets as Mary tossed in the bed, and knew she was awake. I heard the beating
of my own heart, as deafening as it was achingly pleasurable, and nearby, Dunya's
steady heartbeat and stertorous breathing. I could smell the warmth of her flesh,
smell the scent of living blood mingled with my own - the cooling blood of the
dying, the blood of the near-Changed.
And then Uncle -
No, not my uncle. My husband drew back from my now-unstained body, and ran
his tongue over his bloodied lips. Looking deep into my eyes, he said, It is
not yet finished.
I understood; and with agonising effort, lifted an arm to his head and guided
it to my neck.
Astoundingly, the deep gashes there had already entirely healed. I felt no
pain, no tenderness, just the feel of his tongue against smooth, undamaged flesh;
and then I felt his lips move against my skin as he smiled. I smiled, too, weakly,
for I knew it meant the Change was nearly complete.
Yet he hesitated; then brushed his lips against me as he moved his head down,
over the ridge of my collarbone, down onto my breast. He encircled the nipple
with his tongue, then paused, delicately settling his teeth there, until I felt
the sharpest of them dent the very center of that pink-brown flesh.
Despite my weakness, I felt a sudden thrill at the realisation of what he was
about to do. I laced my fingers tightly into the hair at the nape of his neck
and forced him against me.