Bram Stoker's HANNIBAL

Chapter 25: Who Hath Ta'en the Pebble and Spurned the Pearl

CW FOR THIS CHAPTER: NON-CON

Will collapses at last, submitting to my power, his tortured mind swept free of the entire day, sleep overtaking him. I catch him easily in my arms, a fragile bundle of sweet fevered flesh, dampened with sweat. Somehow, an errant spray of Antony's blood found its way to his cheek and forehead. One can never tell which way spurting blood will go.

I am breathing out of necessity for once. I am gorged on blood and it demands my lungs' work; I am panting as a result of my labors. Will's resistance to mesmerism has only grown stronger since the last time I was forced to use it on him. And now I am the keeper of a horrid cascade of images and feelings and wild bursts of terror and ecstasy that I took from him. Usually, when mesmerizing humans, I can see what I want to sponge from their memories and make it disappear, touching the experience only briefly with my own consciousness. Will's memories of this day cling to me like burrs and I cannot brush them away without serious effort, strength that at the moment I do not possess.

I see what he saw, his hallucinations of this Jack the Ripper. I know he read some of Iliya's dreams he wrote down to share with me when I returned from fighting the Turks, letters I never opened for fear of the excruciating grief that would crush me, letters that Reba saved. I know that Iliya dreamed of Will's life before Will existed, that these dreams only began when it seemed his doom was imminent. As if he and Will were blurring across time even before Iliya killed himself.

It is true. Will is Iliya Albescu Lecter, returned across oceans of time to find me. Against science, religion, reason, the order of the natural world, in spite of it all. My beloved husband has returned.

I know that all things conceived of are possible. How else was I able to become this thing that I am?

This monster, as Will so aptly described?

Lucifer below, he thinks I'm a monster.

Ah, there's the cosmic joke. I discover that there is no doubt he is Iliya on the same night he realizes that I am an inhuman fiend.

I sink onto the side of the bed as if my body is weak. It is weak, with the weight of this soul and these burdens, with my yearning love for him and the word monster hanging around my neck like a chain. I hold him to me, listening to his fluttering heart and incomplete breathing, inhaling in the dulcet scent of his burning fever.

I am, all at once, consumed with fury. The same riot in my heart that prompted me to abjure God and embrace darkness in the wake if Iliya's loss.

I will not lose him again. He and I belong together, even if he, at this moment, is repulsed by my true nature. Nothing will stand in my way, even Will himself.

I stand, and arrange his limp body on the bed with tender hands. I can take a chance and leave Will with them; they are both sated, glutted on Antony's blood, a vampire's essence being worth ten times a human's. I've never questioned Chiyoh's loyalty. Ever since Murasaki sent her to care for me after hearing news of Iliya's and Mischa's deaths, I have been under her protection. Murasaki, of course, couldn't have known what I'd become in the wake of losing Iliya, but Chiyoh had her orders. She was my first progeny, and she never wavered.

Well, almost never. Once she became a vampire it took ages to coax her to kill. She realized, however, that if she was going to uphold her promise, that she would have to sustain her immortal life.

And Will should be safe from Bedelia as well. She is now well aware what will happen to her if she touches him.

"It would help immensely if the two of you could clean this up." I am pleased to hear how even and calm my voice is. "I would appreciate the assistance."