Bram Stoker's HANNIBAL

Chapter 6: The Kiss and the Greeting are Vanished and O'er

After a span of centuries, existence has its own monotony. I have spent my years protecting the village, as well as learning, reading, thinking, writing, composing, growing ever more prepared for something, I know not what. I'd thought it had been for our leaving of my homeland, the lofty goal that kept us afloat over the decades. While I will never forget the past, it has become an underground river, ever flowing and seeping up through the soil of my soul, yet out of sight. I have done all of these things, and there have been small islands of feeling, the very occasional discernible emotion.

Antony. Bedelia. Meeting Avigeya and learning her secret.

But this – seeing this man – Iliya and yet not Iliya, cannot be Iliya and yet is Iliya – plunges me headfirst into the dark waters of the river that no longer runs beneath the earth but erupts from it in a great torrent. Memories that I had refused to let myself relive come with this geyser, this earth-shaking eruption. I am submerged in the past, and I see it all again – my first sweet days with Iliya, captured somehow in immaculate detail. To say 'perfect' would not do this vision justice. It is like I have, at last, conquered the secret of traveling through time, a power I have long sought.

But in the wake of our first kiss, I am returned to my body.

No time has passed in this plane of existence.

Antony and Bedelia are looking at me. The solicitor wearing Iliya's face is looking at me, and I cannot bear it.

I lash out with the dark powers that dwell within my mind, using far more force than I likely need to. I mesmerize him where he stands and compel him by exerting the requisite pressure on his brain and essence.

DO NOT SEE ME.

DO NOT SEE ME, I command.

And, as if the night had not brought a proper assortment of horrors, I feel something very different about his mind. Something I cannot describe in this heightened moment, cannot name, cannot fathom. I have never felt this kind of mental presence in a human before.

It is almost like he is pushing back against me.

But only for a moment. It must sap the last of his strength, because his eyes roll up, showing their bloodshot whites, and his knees buckle. Antony catches him before he can hit the floor, lifting him into his arms as if the solicitor weighs nothing.

I flee.

In a blink I am at the library windows, shoving open the casement; it is a miracle it doesn't break. I plunge headfirst out into the cold, snowy night, transforming just before I would smash into the flagstone courtyard below. And now I fly on leathery wings, soaring through the flecks of white, up, up, as high as I can possibly go before wheeling and diving, gliding down in a tight spiral, buffeted by freezing winds.

Inches from the snow in a forest clearing I transform again, stretching my limbs as I run, howling along through the frosty landscape. My pack answers my howls but I ignore them, leaping over fallen trees, sliding through the snow, on and on through the darkness until my senses return to me.

I am grounded by the animal instinct of my wolf form when I discover the scent of blood and despair. I change course and come upon a man and a woman huddled against an outcropping of rock, wrapped in their cloaks. They have tools for digging with them, the remains of a fire smoldering in the snow.

I know why they are here. The local people believe that the blue flames in the forest on this particular night of the year will lead to treasure. They are, in some ways, correct — though the treasure they would recover is only of value to me. This is why, year after year, I use my unearthly power and my knowledge of alchemy to conjure those flames. I have yet to find what I am searching for.