I thought that, since her husband had vanished somewhere between his house and the town, it might be worth my while to look around the mill and see if I could find anything. Oh, not the kind of evidence that the law and soldiery look for on their hands and knees, but signs of monstrous habitation — the spoor of cursed night-creatures who might be swooping down and plucking men out of their saddles, then flying away to devour them at their leisure — or worse. I've found more than one hellspawn lurking in a remote mill.
She seemed agreeable enough and promised to show me over the grounds of the house as well. So we rode out together. By the time we got there, it was nearly time for the three men who were crushing grain to leave for the day, and Gabrielle dismissed them early. I couldn't help but notice the looks that they gave her as they left, as though they dreaded leaving the glory of her sight. And these were men with wedding rings on, too. She just had that effect on anything in trousers.
I got my attention off her long enough to prowl around the mill. The grounds didn't have many places for creatures to skulk. I found a dry well, but she told me that they used it for garbage, and after I got a whiff of the stench coming from down there, I believed her.
We looked in the mill then. 'The only place within that is not in constant use is the cellar,' she said. So I told her to stay upstairs while I went down with a lantern in one hand and the hilt of my sword in the other. I needn't have been so cautious. There wasn't a thing down there except for some staved-in barrels and some empty wooden boxes, none of which was long enough to harbor a vampire. Even the dirt floor had been long undisturbed.
I used the time alone down there to think about my situation. My emotions, really. I hadn't come into close contact with a woman since my blood was profaned by lycanthropy, so naturally I started to think that this. . baser feeling toward her might be the result of it. If this were true, then the best thing I could do would be to avoid Gabrielle now that I'd gotten as much information from her as she could give.
I was just about to bid her good-bye, as much as it hurt me to do it, when she asked me if I'd be willing to come and dine with her, that she had a few more things she wanted to tell me about her husband — 'things hard to say,' as she put it.
I should have refused. I should have gotten on my horse and ridden back to Chateaufaux and never seen her again. That was what I wanted to do, for I feared for this woman to whom I was so attracted, this woman whom I feared I was actually starting to love. Imagine that: me, who had never known love except for the concepts of goodness and purity. But what if that love for her grew into a passion that bore away Dragonov the good man, the slayer of evil, and the beastly side of my nature took over?
But I could not say no to her, no matter how much I wanted to. I believe I would have done anything to remain by her side. So I agreed to dine with her.
As we rode the short distance toward the house, I suddenly drew up my mount and raised a hand for Gabrielle to do the same. She did, looking at me curiously, but I only listened.
Finally she asked, 'What is it? '
'Nothing, I guess,' I said. 'Just thought I heard something. 'What I did not tell her was that it was not hearing as much as sensing. My years of hunting and being hunted by foul beings has given me a sixth sense, in most cases at least, and my lycanthropic blood has increased the sensation. I can feel the presence of a stalker, and I knew that there was something watching us from the thick trees that surrounded the open space in which we rode. I did not want to alarm Gabrielle, however, and since I couldn't tell where the watcher was hiding, I rode on. After a moment I thought that maybe there was nothing there at all, that my sensing an unseen enemy was just a manifestation of my own unease at being alone with Gabrielle.
At the house, she ushered me to a large dining hall and told a servant that there would be two at dinner that evening. I was placed at the end of the large table in the middle of the hall, and she at my right, a very intimate setting in spite of the size of the room. The ceiling was a good thirty feet high, and richly embroidered tapestries hung from nearly every wall.
Two servants brought the dinner and waited on us as we ate. The food was plentiful and delicious, though I could scarcely take my eyes from the woman long enough to eat. We talked of this and that, and she didn't bring up her husband until after she had dismissed the servants for the night, and we were alone in the room, lit by firelight and candles.
Then she walked toward the fireplace, turned, and stood there looking at me. Her gaze might just as well have turned me to stone. During dinner, she had looked at me politely, and reacted with interest when I spoke, but now the look she gave me was that of a lover, intimate and searching.
'Monsieur,' she said huskily, 'I have told you that there is more to the story, and there is. My husband Roger and I did not share the happy marriage you might have imagined. I do wish to find him, that is true, for he is my husband, and for that I owe him the loyalty of a wife. But when I saw you and spoke to you, I knew that you were. . different from other men.'
She had me there, no doubt about it.
'I could tell this to no one before, but I feel certain that you will understand. My husband, despite his public face, was not a kind man to me. He did not know how to treat a woman. But you, I am sure, do.'
I felt unaccountably hot, not only because of the blazing fire whose red-yellow glow illuminated the room, making Gabrielle's hair shimmer like red mist, or, I fancied, a swirling cloud of blood.
'I prefer to be frank, Ivan Dragonov. I will say it once and once only, and if you do not wish to hear it you may leave and I will never speak of it to you again. But I have never felt about a man the way that I feel about you. I see in you the lover and husband I wish I might have had. And I sense that you feel the same emotion toward me.'
I could scarcely breathe. I felt passions and longings I had never known I was capable of.
'There is no one else here,' she said. 'The servants are dismissed for the night. I beg you, Ivan, come to me. Take me in your arms. And love me as I have never been loved before.'
I had no choice. I stood up, completely weaponless. I had not even my will to stop me from going to her embrace. Her moist lips were slightly parted so that I could see the pure whiteness of her teeth in the bright firelight. Her bosom rose and fell with the quickness of her breath, and I knew that she longed for my touch as greatly as I did for hers. She held her arms out toward me, and I ran into them as though blown there by a strong wind.
I had not held a woman in my arms for many years, and the heat of her body pressing close to mine excited me beyond reason, seared my very soul. I sank into her embrace as though drowning once more in the Sea of Sorrows. But this time I welcomed the sensation, preparing myself to dive into the blissful oblivion this sea of love would bring me. We kissed, and the heat from her mouth was like a furnace, a heat that annealed, molded. .
Transformed.
I felt myself begin to change.
True horror is not knowing that something is going to destroy you. No, true horror is just the opposite, knowing that you are the evil, the monster, and that in another few seconds you will be destroying the only person you have ever loved — and are unable to stop yourself. True horror is when the monster looks out of your own eyes. That, my friend, reduces all other horrors to bedtime tales. And that is the horror in which I found myself immersed.
I first felt the transformation in my face, the teeth pressing outward against my gums, lengthening into points that cut into my lips until they, too, expanded and grew, pressing outward along with my snout as the very shape of my skull changed, becoming long and beastlike. Then my muscles expanded, my back broadened, and I closed my eyes and struggled desperately to keep from crushing the air from Gabrielle's lungs. I became taller too, and thought I could feel her flaming red hair gliding down my chest as my head grew nearer to the dark ceiling. I knew that in only seconds my claws would thrust out of my fingertips, piercing the flesh of my gentle love.
There was still enough of the human left in me to realize that if I pushed her away, I might still be able to turn and run out of the house before the beast took over completely and rended her dear body to pieces. But when I tried to push her back, I discovered that she was still clutching me tightly, even tighter than before, holding in her arms a lover who was turning into a murderous fiend.
That startling fact alone actually stopped the transformation for a moment. The overwhelming trust I thought the woman must have in me nearly returned me to my human self, goodness overcoming evil. Or so I thought.
Then I realized that it was not soft arms wrapped around my widening back, but the hairy, long, and wiry legs of a gigantic spider. My dear Gabrielle was a creature like myself, a shapeshifter, a deadly red widow, queen of spiders who seduces men and then drains the life from their bodies.
But this knowledge did not come to me then, for the sudden danger dropped my lycanthropy over me like a
