was mad. Yet I have seen you as both wolf and man, and so I must believe you, as you believed the French nobleman.”
He smiled. “Shall I continue?”
“I would like that,” I said.
“The viscount told us in great detail how he and the mysterious woman coupled, first on the forest floor and then in every curve of that serpentine tree, leaving him so fatigued and spent that he fell into a deep sleep. When he awakened, he found himself in his lover’s kingdom, and that is where he learned the history of her tribe.”
The Count stopped speaking. “Are you tired, Mina? Do you want to go to sleep?”
“No, I am not tired,” I said. The room had grown chilly, but I was as eager as a child to hear the rest of the story.
“I do not want to strain your credulity,” he said. I thought he was teasing me, but I could not be sure. He opened a cabinet, producing a thick wool throw, which he put over me. Then he sat down and continued.
“The viscount learned that his fairy lover and her tribe were descendants of the angels who left heaven, but not because they were expelled by God. That, he said, was a lie told by priests. These angels were powerful creators in their own right and enchanted by human life. After observing humans for millennia, they craved all that physical life offered-touch, sound, scent, the heat and desire that comes with the flow of blood through the veins, and the taste of food and of wine. Sensuality is an abstract quality in the spirit realm, so they came to earth to experience all the senses. The angels thought humans to be magnificent creatures, and they longed for their companionship and their adulation. With their power to shift their shapes, the angels made themselves into physical beings and selected humans who were the most likely to give them children. With their superior intelligence and supernatural gifts, they were irresistible to the mortals.
“Now, all this happened thousands of years before man began to record his history. The fairy queen who seduced the viscount was a descendant of those first couplings between angels and humans. She claimed that some of the offspring of the angels were mortals but some were immortal. As with any two creatures mating, the outcome is not guaranteed, no matter how careful one is in the selection of a partner. But the viscount’s wife was an immortal, and from his union with her came three daughters-beautiful, magical creatures-who went to live with their mother’s tribe in Ireland.
“After hearing his story, all the young knights wanted to go on a quest to find immortal lovers, but the viscount explained to us that even if we did find them, some of us would be driven mad and some of us would die. ‘Their bodies emit a strange power,’ he warned. ‘No one can predict its effect on a mortal.’
“Naturally, each of us wanted to prove that we were as strong and virile as the Viscount of Poitou. So full of bravado were we that the more he tried to warn us, the more we desired to journey to these mystical lands and test our manhood.”
“Did you turn around and go looking for the fairy creatures?” I asked. I was anxious to hear more about them, and this time, not from a madwoman.
“As curious as we were, our honor would never permit desertion. The enchanted women would be our reward for our service.
“The viscount assured us that in battle, we had the protection of both the Church and the fairy queen, and so when we faced the enemy, we fought fearlessly-viciously, in fact. We were as close a band of brothers as has ever existed, and it tore us apart when one of us succumbed, either in battle or to one of the epidemics that infiltrated our camps. We began to inquire about special herbs and tonics and spells that we had heard of that would make us invincible; and with these inquiries, we attracted the attention of a sect of warrior monks, who began to reveal to us their mysteries.
“These monks believed that through the daily transubstantiation of wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ, magical powers were conferred upon them-powers that could be used over our enemies, who were instruments of Satan. ‘We use the very power of Satan to defeat his disciples,’ they claimed. They invited us to take part in a forbidden ceremony, a Requiem Mass, said not for the dead but for our living enemies. We gathered in secret at midnight before the day of battle, and we prayed with great fervor for the souls of our enemies, who we strongly envisioned as already vanquished and dead. At first, it was eerie to imagine the living as dead, and moreover to pray to God to take their souls. But we left these ceremonies elated, and the next day, we fought with uncommon ferocity, slaying greater numbers of our enemies than we thought possible. Whether or not the Black Masses were the reason for our victories, they gave us the faith to go into battle with the certainty that we would win. And win we did. We became a renowned fighting force, and our loyalty to one another grew with every victory.
“As our success grew, so did our ambitions. The monks believed that they had discovered what we were looking for-not just invincibility but immortality. They said that the Christ himself had given us the key when he said, ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.’ These words, as you may know, are from the Gospel of John, and the monks believed in their literal interpretation, that drinking blood was the secret to life everlasting.
“Some of us were appalled at the idea, but at the time, monks were the keepers of all the world’s knowledge and knew things that no one else knew. They said that in ancient times, it was known that the blood housed the soul. Supplicants of warriors and heroes like Theseus and Achilles poured blood into the soil of their graves to give them strength. With this blood, the heroes rose from the dead to fight alongside them in battle. The monks told us other stories to support these ideas: the goddess Athena gave Asclepius the power to heal by giving him the blood of the Gorgon. The Roman gladiators drank the blood of their kill, both animal and human, to absorb the strength of the enemy. The berserkers, the savage warriors of Odin who tore their opponents apart, ripping through their jugulars with bare teeth and eviscerating them without the aid of weaponry, got their power by drinking animal blood. The maenads, the original followers of Dionysus, drank both wine and blood in their rituals, sacrificing animals and sometimes a human in their frenzies. The monks said that blood consumption and blood sacrifice were as old as time, and that was why Jesus made himself a human sacrifice, giving us His blood to drink. They also warned us that drinking the blood of another can cause illness, even death, for blood carries humors both good and bad. But we were men who faced death every day. For us, drinking blood would be just another test of our strength.
“We young men desperately wanted to join the ranks of the eternal heroes. We formed a secret brotherhood and vowed that we would not rest until we discovered the key to immortality. Despite the risks, we began to drink blood as part of our ritual to prepare for battle-the blood of animals, the blood of our enemies-and eventually, we shared our own blood with one another.”
He paused. “You must sleep. Your body is still recovering from the treatment at the asylum, and some of the medication is still in your blood.” He reached his hand out to me. “Please come and sit beside me.”
I did as he requested. He took my hand and put his fingers to the inside of my wrist. “As I thought. Your pulse is not what it should be right now. Your energy centers were weakened by what they did to you.”
“How do you know these things?” I asked, remembering what he had done to my pulse points in my dream, and I felt a hot, crimson flush across my face.
“I was not always a warrior. I have also been a doctor,” he said, placing my hand back in my lap. “And by the way, it was not a dream, Mina.”
I was astonished that he had read my thought so quickly. It was both thrilling and terrifying to be so vulnerable to another. There was nowhere to hide. It was like being perennially naked. “It had to be a dream. It happened in my sleep,” I said.
“It happened in another realm, one in which I have visited you many times. And do not worry. As you grow stronger, you will be able to efficaciously hide your thoughts from me. I do not look forward to that day, but it will come. Now to bed.”
“I do not want to go to bed,” I said. “I want to hear the rest of the story.”
“That will take a very long time,” he said. “I would prefer if you would rest. You will need your strength in Ireland. It is not a kind climate at this time of year.”
I had been listening to the rain beat down on the ship as we sailed. I wanted him to lie next to me so that I could fall asleep safely beside him. “Will you sleep as well?”
“Not tonight,” he said. “Sometimes I sleep for long periods of time, years at a time, and sometimes I do not sleep at all. If I am bored, if I do not admire the ways and customs of an era, if my physical body is wounded or fatigued, I go into a deep sleep, an altered state during which the body is preserved. You would call it hibernation or
