Bram Stoker's HANNIBAL

Chapter 17: Night is Come - There Is No More Day

I pause and glance up from my reading.

Will is asleep, laying half on his side on the lounge, wine only tasted, petal lips slightly parted, dark lashes feathering on his cheeks like downy shadows.

I smile. It is a doting expression. We must have walked farther today than I realized. I am not tired. Never tired, not from physical exertion. Just the long stretch of a lonely, heartbroken existence. Where our hours of walking tired Will, they only fed and invigorated me. Ever since he stepped through the door of my home I have come back to life, suffering through all the joys and sorrows and agonies and delights of a living man once again. I had forgotten how powerful it all was. I had forgotten how much love I have to give. I had not fully understood the scale of the void inside of me until he came.

I was not aware of myself until I became aware of him. Will Graham has awakened me to the world once more. It is simultaneously exquisite and terrifying.

Now, I put the book aside and I watch him sleep. It's dangerous, I know. I could barely control myself the last time I let myself gaze on him like this, in his sweetly mortal vulnerability. But he looks most like Iliya in moments like these.

My eye wanders down the slope of his lissome throat and I see the mark I left behind. I chastise myself for the hundredth time today. I came very close to ruin. To showing him what I am before the time is right. That knowledge must be fed to him carefully, one morsel at a time. It could take years of careful planning.

Manipulation. Nothing is going to keep Will from loving me one day, and that includes Will himself.

I must be patient. And the sight and smell of a little blood cannot bring me so close to disaster. I need to eat so that I am not so sorely tempted. I have avoided it; we must, by necessity, hunt far afield when opportune prey is scarce. I do hate to give Antony any credit for intelligent thought, but he's right — the family must not go hungry, for Will's sake. I make a note in my mind to speak with Chiyoh to see if she could bring something back for the others.

I think about blood now, looking at him. About the sweet taste of his throat, the unique complexities of his blood, his incredible warmth. I want it all. I want to eat him. I want to fuck him. I want to eat him while I fuck him and I want to love him and I don't want to wait.

What I need, I realize, is to leave the room. For both our sakes.

I rise from my chair to wake him and send him to his chamber. I wish I could carry him there without it raising questions in his mind about my strength, my ability to transport him so gently that he would not wake.

I deny myself the privilege. Will has a brilliant mind, and he's already asked about the mirrors. Tonight I'm half-sure he's started to question my lack of eating human food. All this, and the mesmerism. It has never failed me before. I can compel humans to do all sorts of things, wipe their memories clean or implant other ones that suit my purposes. I've been doing it for centuries.

Yet another way that Will has intrigued and frightened me. His mind feels so wholly different from any I've manipulated before. It is almost as if he was aware of what I was doing, even as I erased his memory. I believe now more than ever that I was correct in my insistence to myself that I not use mesmerism to make him love me. Quite honestly, I'm not sure it would work.

I sink down on the edge of the lounge and reach out to shake him gently awake.

It is then that I realize he is dreaming.

Will begins to breathe heavy, panicked, trembling breaths. He sweats and keens out soft, sleepy whimpers. He is having a nightmare. Part of me, the detached, curious portion that has removed itself from humanity, would like to wait to see if he gets up and walks, to see what he looks like when he is in the liminal state. But my newly-awakened heart won't stand for it, and I touch his face gently, take his hand in my own. "Will. Will, wake up."