“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.