again, pressing his hips to her body. She ran her hands over his shoulders and loosened his shirt. 'You don't believe me, either.'
And then she smiled. 'I want to believe you. I told you once, I don't want to be human.'
He raised his eyebrows and smiled down at her. 'I doubt you have the right genes to be anything else.'
His bedroom was neat, sparsely furnished. She recognized books from Miss Trilby's Tomes, Red Dragon, Confessions of an English Opium Eater on a low shelf near the bed. Unexpectedly, he lifted her off her feet and laid her on the quilt. They kissed again, a long, complicated kiss. He took her slowly. He didn't close the door, and from the bed she could see his computer screen in the living-room. The Giger wraiths in his screen saver danced slowly to their passion. And then she closed her eyes, and the wraiths danced behind her lids.
When they were finished, she knew that she had lied; if she did not feel love, then it was something as strong and as dangerous.
She traced a vein on the back of his hand. 'You were born in Italy?'
He kissed the hand with which she had been tracing his veins. 'Hundreds of years ago, yes. Before my flesh became numb.'
'Then why don't you speak with an accent?'
He rolled on to his back, hands behind his head, and grinned. 'I've been an American longer than you have. I made it a point to get rid of my accent. Aren't you going to ask me about the sun and garlic and silver bullets?'
'All just superstition?'
'It would seem.' He smiled wryly. 'But there is the gradual loss of feeling.'
'You say you can't love.'
He groped in the bedside table for a pen. He drove the tip into his arm. 'You see?' Blood welled up slowly.
'Stop! My god, must you hurt yourself?'
'Just demonstrating. The flesh has been consumed by the — by the cancer, if that's what it is. It starts in the coldest parts of the body. No nerves. I don't feel . It has nothing to do with emotion.'
'And because you are territorial'
'Yes. But the emotions don't die, exactly. There's this horrible conflict. And physically, the metastasis continues, very slowly. I heard of a very old vampire whose brain had turned. He was worse than a shark, a feeding machine.'
She pulled the sheets around her. The room seemed cold now that they were no longer entwined. 'You seemed human enough, when you — '
'You didn't feel it when I kissed you?'
'Feel'
He guided her index finger into his mouth, under the tongue. A bony little organ there, tiny spikes, retracted under the root of the tongue.
She jerked her hand away, suddenly afraid. He caught it and kissed it again, almost mockingly.
She shuddered, tenderness confounded with terror, and buried her face in the pillow. But wasn't this what she had secretly imagined, hoped for?
'Next time,' she said, turning her face up to him, like a daisy to the sun, 'draw blood, do.'
The wraiths in his screen saver danced.
The idea of a bus trip to Seattle filled her with dread, and she put it off, as if somehow by staying in Warren she could stop the progress of reality. But a second letter, this from her ex-sister-in-law Miriam, forced her to face facts. The chemotherapy, Miriam wrote, was not working this time. Ashley was 'fading'.
'Fading'!
The same mail brought a postcard from Scuroforno. Out of town on business, seeing to investments. Be well, human , he wrote.
She told Miss Trilby she needed time off to see Ashley.
'Lambkin, you look awful. Don't go on the bus. I'll lend you money for the plane, and you can pay me back when you marry some rich lawyer.'
'No, Miss Trilby. I have a cold, that's all.' Her skin itched, her throat and mouth were sore, her head throbbed.
They dusted books that afternoon. When Gretchen came down from the stepladder, she was so exhausted she curled up on the settee in the back room with a copy of As You Desire . The words swam before her eyes, but they might stop her from thinking, thinking about Ashley, about cancer, immortal cells killing their mortal host. Thinking, immortal . It might have worked. A different cancer. And then she stopped thinking.
And awoke in All Soul's Hospital, in pain and confusion.
'Drink. You're dehydrated,' the nurse said. The room smelled of bleach, and dead flowers.
Who had brought her in?
'I don't know. Your employer? An elderly woman. Doctor will be in to talk to you. Try to drink at least a glass every hour.'
In lucid moments, Gretchen rejoiced. It was the change, surely it was the change. If she lived, she would be released from all the degrading baggage that being human hung upon her.
