“ ‘You did not with this one,’ said Arion emphatically.

“ ‘My grandson, my very grandson,’ cried the Old Man to himself in his misery. ‘You blaspheming wretch.’

“ ‘And so he will live forever,’ said Petronia solemnly. She laughed. ‘What more can I do? What more can I give?’

“I turned to look at her. With these precious eyes I saw her harsh loveliness as though it were a miracle.

“And I knew what had been done to me. Of its history, of its commonness, of its rules, of its limits I knew nothing. But I knew what had been done. Immortality. I knew it but couldn’t grasp it. Where was God? Where was my faith? Had the whole edifice collapsed in this monstrosity?

“I began to feel a wrenching pain. Was I deluded?

“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?’ ”

CHAPTER 30

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.