Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [237]
“At the same time I became enraged as I always do by such hurt, and, falling down on the floor, I sought to get up immediately, and I flew at her, missing her and falling on my knees.
“I heard her cruel laughter. I heard Manfred weeping. Where was Arion? I looked up and caught a glimpse of the two men seated in their chairs at the table. And where was she?
“She slipped her hand under my shoulder and yanked me to my feet and slapped me hard on the left side of my face and then threw me across the floor. I went sprawling. It was pointless to try to fight. It was everything to keep to my word. To give her no sport at all. But I couldn’t keep to it. Again, I tried to get up.
“Now, I knew nothing of fighting. Or I should say all I knew of it was what I had watched in boxing, which was my favorite spectator sport. And there was no way to apply what I knew in this situation, and I had never acquired any skill at fighting myself.
“But as I rose to my feet this time I saw Petronia standing right before me, and it seemed commonsensical that if I ran low at her I could topple her, and so I did this, tackling her right below the knees, and over me she went.
“The men laughed at this, which was unfortunate. I would rather have had cheers. But spinning round I came down on her before she could rise, and I tried to put my thumbs into her eyes. She caught me around the throat with both her hands, and now, fully enraged, she threw me over and back on the floor and then dragged me across it until she had come to the balcony, at which point she grabbed both my wrists in one hand and slung me over the white railing and asked me if I would like to be dropped to my death.
“I could see the lights of the traffic far below on the winding road. I could also see the ocean boiling on the rocks just beyond it. I gave her no answer. I was dazed. I also thought I was doomed. I knew Manfred didn’t have the power to stop her. And I didn’t think that Arion would.
“That I had thrown her over only made things worse.
“Next I knew she had drawn me up and thrown me onto the floor again and was kicking me and dragging me about the room. I thought of her as a giant cat again, as I had in the Hermitage, and of myself as her prey.
“ ‘This is not the way to do such a thing,’ Arion said to her. I heard it near me as though he had come up to her, but where we were in the room, I didn’t know.
“Petronia said, ‘We choose our own way, don’t we? We must do it the way we want to do it. In a fraction of a second, all his wounds will heal. He’ll know the power of the Blood when that happens, and it will be all the finer for him. Let me have what I need.’
“ ‘But why, my darling, why do you need it?’ Arion said. ‘I don’t understand, my precious one, why the rage, always the rage?’
“They went on talking but they had switched back into Italian. I sensed that he was talking about the passage of time and that she had once been different, but that was all I could divine. The Old Man continued to cry.
“I tried to move and then I felt Petronia’s foot on my throat. I was choking. She let up on the pressure and I saw her face above mine, her hair pouring down and tickling me as she drew me up to her with both her hands. My weight meant nothing to her. She came in close to me as though she meant to kiss me on the throat.
“I lay back on a couch, and she had her arms behind my back, and her mouth was open against my skin, and then I felt two sharp pinpricks on the side of my throat, and the world and all my pain went dim. I heard her heart beat.
“Teach me, she said. I will not have my kiss be quiet.
“That she was sucking my blood from me I knew, and that I was getting weaker and weaker I knew as well. And it did seem that all my life fled from me, that image after image of childhood, young manhood and the last few years of love and ecstasy and wonder fled from me with my blood—uncontrollably, unstinting and pure. What this intimacy meant in the greater scheme of things I was helpless to understand, and then she drew back and I went limp