Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [241]
“Arion said:
“ ‘This is human death. It’ll take a few short moments. Go with the attendants into the bath. They’ll dress you afterwards, and then you’ll learn how to hunt.’
“ ‘So we are vampires,’ I said. ‘We are the legend.’ The pain in my gut was intolerable. I saw the male attendant I had known before. He was waiting.
“ ‘Blood Hunters,’ said Arion. ‘Defer to me with these words, and I’ll love you all the more.’
“ ‘But why do you love me at all?’ I asked.
“Placing his hand on my shoulder, he said,
“ ‘How could I not?’ ”
39
“ALL MY LIFE I’d believed in Heaven and Hell. Did Heaven look down upon this metamorphosis?
“I was a drunk man at the height of his folly, regretting nothing. I lay in the bath, naked, as the dark fluids poured out of me. At last the pain stopped and the streams of fresh water ran pure. The human death was over.
“I looked at the three servants—the Adonis and the two sharp-featured young girls. They were either horrified or perfectly astonished.
“As I washed in the fresh water, as I scrubbed with the sponge, it was the young Adonis who brought the soap to me, and the towel, and helped me out of the bath and into fresh clothes—the same fancy garments as the others wore—black dinner jacket, trousers and white satin turtleneck, so that I would look like my new companions who I was now to join, or so I imagined.
“I felt a sharp unconscionable hunger for the blood of these young servants, born of the very sight of the blood moving under their flesh and the strong smell of it in the air around us. I wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t their brother. They couldn’t feel what I felt. They couldn’t know what I knew.
“Arion’s admonitions came back to me. Evil Doers. I realized I was looking into the eyes of the roughest of the girls, who had most assuredly expected me to be murdered, and as I did so I could see into her mind: I could see her anger, see her bitterness, see her heated temper. And as I stared at her, with the tender Adonis adjusting my clothes, there came from her the nastiest voice.
“ ‘Why you?’ she demanded. ‘Why you instead of one of us? Who are you that it should be you?’
“ ‘Hush, no,’ said the boy quickly. ‘Don’t be so foolish.’
“The other girl affected a cold, cynical air, but she felt the same sentiment. She felt cheated and angry. Hatred emanated from both women, and I realized it was angering me, and I detested them, detested them that they would have dumped my body this very night with no thought more than that it was a cumbersome task for them.
“ ‘We work, we wait,’ said the brash one, ‘and then you’re brought here, and she chooses you. Why!’
“ ‘No, quiet,’ said the boy again. He had finished adjusting my turtleneck and the lapels of my coat. He looked pleadingly into my eyes, wondering, adoring. He seemed to feel some mammoth sympathy for me that I hadn’t died. He seemed to think it marvelous.
“ ‘How many others has she brought here?’ I asked him.
“He had no time to answer. The two doors to the bath were shut with a snap. And before the two girls or the boy could turn around, another two doors were also shut. No exit now remained except the terrace, and I knew the drop that existed beneath it.
“I turned around. I found Petronia against the doors behind me.
“ ‘Very well then,’ she said, ‘so you’ve finished dying, and you’ll never know it again unless you choose to know it. Now you’ll make another choice. You’ll choose your first kill. And that will be one of these. Be swift about it. I don’t care who it is. No. I do care. I’m curious. Go on!’
“ ‘The girls gasped and screamed and, reaching for each other, backed up against the marble-tiled wall. The boy merely looked at Petronia and did nothing. He seemed to feel a profound disappointment but never made a sound.
“ ‘I can’t do it,’ I said.
“ ‘You can and you will,’ said Petronia. ‘Choose one of these or I’ll choose for you. They’re Evil Doers par excellence. They would have hauled you away tonight, a mere carcass to them, had you died.’
“She came up beside me. Her face softened and