The woman was old. and no longer beautiful. In common with all living thin gs, she had aged, though very slowly, like the tall trees in the park. Slender and gaunt and leafless, they stood out there, beyond the long windows, rain-dashed in the grey morning. While she sat in her high back chair in the corner of the room where the curtains of thick yellowing lace and wine colored blinds kept every drop of daylight out. In the glimmer of the ornate oil lamp, she had been reading. The lamp came from a Russianalace. The book had once graced the library of a corrupt pope named, in his temporal existence, Roderigo Borgia. Now the woman's dry hands had fallen upon the pages. She sat in her black lace dress that was 180 years of age, far younger than she herself, and looked at the old man, streaked by the shine of distant windows. "You say your tired, my dear. I know how it is. To be tired, and unable to rest. It is a terrible thing." "But Princess," said the old man quitely to His love. "it is more that this, I am dying." The woman stirred a little. The pale leaves of her hands rustled on the pages. She stared, with an almost childlike wonder."Dying? Can this be? Youa re sure?" The odl man, very clean and neat in his dark clothing, nodding humbly. "Yes, Princess." "Oh my dear," she said, "are you glad?" He seemsed a little embarrassed, Finally he said: "Forgive me, Princess, but I am very glad. Yes, very glad." I understand." she said "Only," he said, I am troubled for your sake."

"No, No," said the old owman, with a fragile prefect courtesy of her class and kind. "No, it must notconcern you. You have been a good servant. Far better than I might ever have hoped for. I am thankful, my dear. forall your care of me. I shall miss you. But you have earned your death." she hesitated then said, "You have more than earned yoru peace." "But you." he said. "I shalle do very well. My requirements are small, now. The days when I was a huntress are gone, and the nights. Do you remeber my dear? "I remember Princess." "When I was so hungery, and so relentless. And so lovely. My white face in a thousand ballroom mirriors. My silk slippers stained with dew. And my lovers waking in the cold morning, where I had left them. But now, I do not sleep, I am seldom hungery. I never lust. I never love. These are the comforts of old age. There is only one confort that is deined to me. And who knows, one day I too......" She smiled at him. Her teeth were beautiful, but almost even now the exquiste points of the canines quite worn away. "Leave me when you must,"she said. "I shall mourn you. I shall envery you. But I ask nothing more, my good and noble friend." The old man bowed his head. "I have," he said, "a few days, a handful of nights. There is something I wish to try to do in this time. I will try to find one who may take my place." The woman stared at him again, now astonished. But Elric, my irreplacable help-it is no longer possible.""Yes, If I am shift." "The world is not as it was," she said, with a grave and dreadfull wisdom. He lifted his head. More gravely, he answered. "The world is as it has always been, princess. Only our perceptions of it have grown more acute. Our knowledge less bearable." She nodded. "yes, this must be so. How could the world have changed so terribly? It nust be we who have changed." He trimmed the lamp before he left her. Outside, the rain dripped steadily from the trees.

The city, in the rain, was not unlike a forest. But the old man, who had been in many forests and many cities, had no special feelings for it. His feelings, his senses, were primed to other things. Nevertheless, he was conscious of his bizarre and anachronistic effect, like that of a figure in some surrealist painting, walking the streets in clothes of a bygone era, aware he did not blend with his surroundings, nor render them homage of any kind. Yet even when, as sometimes happened, a gang of childern or youths jeered and called after him the foul names he was familier with in twenty languages, he neither cringed nor cared. Hehad no no concern for such things. He had been so many places, seen so many sights; cities which burnedor fell to ruin , the young who grew old, as he had and who died as now, at last, he would die. This thought ofdeath soothed him, comforted him, and brought with it great saddness, a strange jealousy. He did not want to leave her. Of course he did not. The idea of her vulnerability in this harsh world, not new in its cruelty but anicent, though freshly recognized-it horrified him. This was the sadness, and the jealousy... that, because he must try to find another to take his place. and that other would come to be for her, as he had been.

The memories rose and sank in his brain like waking dreams all the time he moved about the streets. As he climbed the steps of a museums and under asses, he remembered other steps in other lands, of marble and fine stone. And looking out from high balconies, the city reduced to a map, he recollected he towers of cathedrals, the starswept points of mountains. And then at last, as if turning over the pages of a book backwards, he reached the beginning. There she stood, between two tall white graves, the chateau grounds behind her, everything silvered in the dusk before the dawn. She wore a ball dress, and a long white cloak. And even then,er hair was dressed in the fashion of a century ago; dark hair, like black flowers. he had known for a year before that he he would serve her. The moment he had hard them talk of her in the town. They were not afraid of her, but in awe. She did not prey upon her own people, as some of her line had done. When he could get up, he went to her. He had kneeled, and stammered something; he was only 16, and she not much older. But she had simply looked at him quitely and said: "I know. You are welcome." The words had been in a language they seldom spoke together now. Yet always, when he recalled that meeting, she said them in that tounge, and with the same gentle inflection.

All about, in the small cafe where he had paused to sit and drink coffee, vague shapes came and went. Of no interest to him no use to her. Throughout the morning, they're had been nothing to alert him. He would know. He would know. He would know, as he had known it of himself. He rose, and left the cafe, and the waking dream walked with him. A lean black car slid by and he recaptured a carriage carving through white snow. A step brushed the pavement, perhaps twenty feet behind him. The old man did not hesitate. He stepped on and into an alleyway that ran between the high buildings. The steps followed him; He could not hear them all, only one in seven, or eight. A little wire of tension began to fray taut within him, but he gave no sign. Water rickled along the brickworkbeside him, and the noise of the city was lost. Abruptly, a hand was on the back of his neck, a capable hand, warm and sure, not harming him yet. Almost the touch of a lover, "that's right old man. Keep still. I'm not going to hurt you, not if you do what I say" He stood, the warm and vital hand on his neck, and waited. All right," said the voice, which was masculine and young and with some other elusive quality to it. "Now let me have your wallet." The old man spoke in a faltering tone, very foreign, very fearful. "I-----have no wallet."

The hand changed its nature, gripping him a bit."Don't lie to me, I can hurt you. I don't want to, but I can. Give mewhatever money you have.""yes, " he faltered, "yes yes." And slipped from the sure and merciless grip like water, spinning, and gripping in turn flinging away-- there was a whirl of movement. The old man's attacker slammed against the wet gray wall and rolled down it. He lay on the rainy debris of the alley floor, and stared up, too surprised to look surprised. This had happed many times before. Several had supposed the old man an easy mark, but he had all the steely power of what he was. Even now, even dying, he was terrible in his strength.

And yet, though it had happened often, now it was different. The tension had not gone away. Swiftly, deliberately, the old man studied the young one. Something struck hone instantly. Even sprawled, the adversary was peculiarly graceful, the grace of enormous physical coordination. The touch of the hand, also, impervious and certain--- there was strength here. And now, the eyes. Yes, the eyes were steady, intelligent, and with acurious lambency, an innocence---"Get up," the old man said. He had waited upon an aristocrat. He had become one himself, and sounded it. Up. I will not hit you again." The young man grinned, aware of the irony. The humor flittered through his eyes. In the dull light of the alley, they were the color of leopards---not the eyes of a leopards, but their pelts."yes, and you could, couldn't you granddad." My name," said the old man,"Is Elric Gorin. I am the father to none, and my nonexistent sons and daughters have no children. And you?" "My name," said the young man , "is Robert." The old man nodded. He did not really care about names, either. "Get up Robert. You attempted to rob me, because you are poor having no work and no wish for work. I will buy you food, now." The young man continued to lie, as if at ease, on the ground. "Why?" "Because I want something from you." "What? You're right. I'll do almost anything. If you pay me enough. So you can tell me."

The old man looked at the young man called Robert, and knew that all he said was a fact. Knew that here was one who had stolen and whored, and stolen again when the slack bodies slept, both male and female, exhausted by the sexual vampirism he had practiced on them, drawing their misguided souls out through their pores as later he would draw the notes from purse and pocket. Yes, a vampire. Maybe a murderer too. Very probably a murderer. "Almost anything, is what I said." "Advise me then," said ELric Gorin, the servant of the vampire, "what you will not do. I shall refrain from asking it of you." The young man laughed. In one fluid movement he came to his feet. When the old man walked on, he followed.

Testing him, the old man took Robert to an expensive restaurant, far up on the white hills of the city, where the glass geography nearly scratched the sky. Ignoring the mud on his dilapidated leather jacket. Robert became a flawless image of decorum, became what is always ultimately respected, one who does not care. The old man, who also did not care, appreciated this act, but knew it was nothingmore. Robert had learned how to be a prince. But he was a gigolo with a closet full of skins to put on. Now and then the speckled leopard eyes, sereaching wary, would give him away. After the good food and the excellent wine, the cognac, the cigarettes taken from the silver box---- Robert had stolen three, but stylishly overt, had left them sticking like porcupinequills from his breast pocket--- they went out again into the rain. The dark was gathering, and Robert solicitously took the old man's arm. Elric Gorin dislodged him, offended by the cheapness of the gesture after the acceptable one with the cigarettes."Don't you like me anymore?" said Robert. "I can go, now if you want. But you might pay for my wasted time.""Stop that," said Elric Gorin. "Come along." Smiling, Robert came with him. They walked, between the glowing pyramids of stores, through shadowy tunnels, over the wet paving. When the thoroughfares folded away and the meadows of the great gardens began, Robert grew tense. The landscape was less familiar to him, obviously. This part of the forest was unknown.Threes hung down from the air to the side of the road."I could kill you here," said Robert. "Take your money, and run.""You could try," said the old man, but he was becoming weary. He was no longer certain, and yet, he was sufficiently certain that his jealousy had assumed a tinge of hatred. If the young man were stupid enough to set on him, how simple it would be to break the columnar neck, like pale amber, between his fleshless hands. But then, she would know. She would know he had found for her, and destroyed the finding. And she be generous, and he would leave her, aware he had failed her, too.

Three windows were alight, high in the house. Her windows. And asthey came to the stair that led up, under its skein of ivy, into the porch, her pencil-thin shadow passed over the lights above, like smoke, or a ghost. "I thought you lived alone," said Robert. "I thought you were lonely." The old man did not answer anymore. He went up the stairs and opened the door. Robert came in behind him, and stood quite still, until Elric Gorin had found the lamp in the niche by the door, and lit it. Unnatural stained glass flared in the door panels, and the window niches either side, owls and lotuses and far-off temples, scrolled and luminous., oddly aloof. Elric began to walk toward the inner stairs. "Just a minute," said Robert. Elric halted, saying nothing. "I'd just like to know," said Robert, "how many of your friends are here, and just what your friends are figuring to do, and how I fit into their plans." The old man sighed. "There is one woman in the room above. I am taking you to see her. She is a Princess. Her name is............Darejan Draculas."

He began to ascend the stair. Left in the dark, the visitor said softly: "What?" "You think you have heard the name, You are correct. But it is another branch." He heard only the first step as it touched the carpeted stair. With a bound the creature was upon him, the lamp was lifted from his hand. Robert danced behind it, glittering and unreal. "Dracula,"he said. "Draculas. Another branch." "A vampire." "Do you believe in such thing?" said the old man. "You should, living as you do, preying as you do." "Prey, said the old man. "Prey upon. ou cannot even speak your own language. Give me the lamp, or I shall take it? The stairs are steep. You may be damaged, this time. Which will not be good for any of your trades." Robert made a little bow, and returned the lamp.

They continued up the carpeted hill of stairs, and reached a landing and so a passage, and so her door. The appurtenances of the house, even glimpsed in the erratic fleeting of the lamp, were very gracious. The old man was used them, but Robert, perhaps, took note. Then again, like the size and importance of the park gates, the young theif might well anticpated such elegance, And there was no neglect, no dust, no air of decay, or more tirtely, of the grave. Women arrived regularly from the city to clean, under Vasyelu's stern command; flowers were even arranged in the salon for those occasions when the Princess came downstairs. Which was rarely,now. How tired she had grown. Not aged, but bored by life. The old man sighed again, and knocked upon her door. Her response was given softly. Elric Gorin saw, from the tail of his eye, the young man's reaction, his ears almost pricked, like a cat's "Wait here," Elric said, and went into the room, shutting the door, leaving the other outside it in the dark. The windows that had shone bright outside were black within. The candles burned, red and white carnations. The Vampire was seated before her little harpsichord.

She had probably been playing it, its song so quiet it was seldom audible beyond her door. Long ago, nonetheless, he would have heard it Long ago- "Princess," he said, " I have brought someone wiht me." He had not been sure what she would do, or say, confronted by the actuality. She might even remonstrate, grow angery, though he had not ofen seen her angery. But he saw now she had guessed, in some tangible way, that he would not return alone, and she had been preparing herself. As she rose to her feet, he beheld the red satin dress, the jewelled silver crucifix at her throat, the trickle of silver from her ears. On the thin hands, the great rings throbbed their salbe colors. Her hair, which had never lost its blackness, abbreviated at her shoulders and waved in a fashion of only twenty years before, framed the starved bones of her face with a savage luxuriance. She was magnificent. Gaunt, elderly, her beauty lost, her heart dulled, yet--magnificent, wondrous. He stared at her humbly, ready to weep because, for the half of one moment, he had doubted. "Yes," she said. She gave him the briefest smile, like a swift caresss. "Then I will see him, Elric."

Robert was seated cross-legged a short distance along the passage. He had discovered, in the dark, a slender Chinese vase of the yang ts` ai palette, and held it between his hands, his chin resting on the brim. "Shall I break it?" he asked. Elric ignored the remark. He indicated the opened door. "You may go in now." "May I? How excited you're making me." Robert flowed upright. Still holding the vase, he went through into the Vampire's apartment.

The old man came into the room after him, placing his black-garbed body,like a shadow, by the door, which he left now standing wide. The old man watched Robert. Circling slightly, perpahps unconcisously, he had approached a thrid of the chamber's length toward the woman. Seeing him from the back, Elric Gorin was able to observe all the play of tautening muscles along the spine, like those of something readying itself to spring or to escape. Yet, not seeing the face, the eyes,was unsatisfactory. The old man shifted his position, edged shadowlike along the room's perimeter, until he had gained a better vantage. "Good evening," the Vampire said to Robert. "Would you care to put down the vase? Or, if you prefer, smash it. Indecision can be distressing." "Perpahps I'd prefer to keep the vase." "Oh, then do so, by all means. But I suggest you allow Elric to wrap it up for you, before you go. Or someone may rob you on the street." Robert pivoted, lightly, like a dancer, and put the vase on a sidetable. Turning again, he smiled at her. "There are so many valuable things her. What shall I take? What about the silver cross you're wearing?" The Vampire smiled. "An heirloom, I'am rather fond of it. I do not recommend you should try to take that." Robert's eyes enlarged. He was naive, amazed. "But I thought, if I did what you wanted, if I made you happy-I could have whatever I liked. Wasn't that the bargain?"

"And how would you propose to make me happy?" Robert went close to her, his breath stirring the filaments of her hair. He slipped his left hand along her shoulder, sliding from the red satin to the dry uncolored skin of her throat.Elric remembered the touch of the hand, electric, and so sensitive, the fingers of an artist or a surgeon. The Vampire never changed. She said: "No. You will not make me happy, my child." "Oh," Robert said into her ear. "You can't be certain. If you like, if you really like, I'll let you drink my blood." The Vampire laughed. It was frightening. Something dormant yet intensely powerful seemed to come alive in her as she did so, like flame from a finished coal. The sound, the apalling life, shook the young man away from her. And for an instant, the old man saw fear in the leopard yellow eyes, a fear as intrinsic to the being of Robert as to cause fear was intrinsic to the being of the Vampire. And, still blazing with her power, she turned on him. "What do you think I am?" she said, "some senile hag greedy to rub her scaly flesh against your smoothness; some hag you can, being yourself without sanilty or fastidousness, corrupt with the phantoms, the leftovers of pleasure, and the murder, tearing the gems from her fingers with your teeth? Or Iam a preverted hag, wanting to lick up your youth with your juices. Am I thaty? Come now," she said, her fire lowering itself, crackling with its amusement, with everything she held in check, her voice a long, long pin, skewering what she spoke to against the farther wall. "Come now, How can I be such a fiend, and wear the crucifix on my breast? My ancient, withered, fallen, empty breast, Come now. What's in a name?" As the pin in her voice came out of him, the young man pushed himself away from the wall. For an instant there was an air of panic about him.

He was accustomed to the characteristics of the world. Old men creeping through rainy alleys could not strike mighty blows with their iron hands. Women were moths that burnt, but did not burn, tones of tinsel and pleading, not razor blades. Robert shuddered all over. And then his panic went away. Instinctively, he told something from the aura of the room itself. Living as he did, generally hehad come to trust his instinctgs. He slunk back to the woman, not close, this time, no nearer than two yards. "Your man over there," he said, "he took me to a fancy restaurant, he got me drunk. I say things when I'm drunk. I shouldn't say. You see? I', a lout. I shouldn't be here in your nice house. I don't know how to talk to people like you, To a lady. You see? But I haven't any money. None. Ask him. I explained it all. I'll do anything for money. And the way I talk. Some of them like it. You see? It makes me sound dangerous. They like that. But it's just an act." Fawning on her, bending on her the groundless glory of his eyes, he had also retreated, was almost at the door. The Vampire made no move. Like a marvelous waswork she dominated the room, red and white andblack, and the old man was only a shadow in a corner. Robert darted about and bolted. In the blind lightlessness, he skimmed the passage, leaped out in space upon the stair, touched, leaped, touched, reaching the open area beyond. Some glint of starshine revealed the stain-glass panes in the door. As it crashed open, he knew quite well that he had been let go. Then it slammed behind him and he pelted through ivy and down the puter steps, and across the hollow plain of tall wet trees. So much, infallibly, his instincts had told him. Strangely, even as he came out of the gates upon the vacant road, and raced toward the heart of the city, they did not tell him he was free.

"Do you recollect," said the Vampire, "you asked me, at the very beginning, about the curcifux." "I do recollect, Princess. It seemed odd to me, then. I did not understand, of course." "And you," she said. "How would you have it after-" She waited. She said, "After you leave me." He rejoiced that his death would cause her a momentary pain. He could not help that, now. He had seen the fire wake in her, flash and scald in her, as it had not done for half a century, ignited by the presence of the thief, the gigolo, the parasite. "He," said the old man, "is young and strong, and can dig some pit for me." "And no cermony?" She had overlooked his petulance, of course, and her tact made him ashamed. "Just to lie quiet will be enough," he said, "but thank you, Princess, for your care. I do not suppose it will matter. Either there is nothing, or there is something so different I shall be astonished by it." "Ah, my friend. Then you do not imagine yourself damned?" "No," he said. "No, no." And all at once there was passion in his voice, one last fire of his own to offer her. "In the life you gave me, I was blessed."

She closed her eyes, and Elric Gorin perceived he had wounded her with his love. And, no longer peevishly, but in the way of a lover, he was glad. Next day, a little before three in the afternoon, Robert returned. A wind was blowing, and seemed to have blown him to the door in a scurry of old brown leaves. His hair was also blown, and bright, his face wind slapped to a ridiculous freshness. His eyes, however, were heavy, encircled, dulled. The eyes showed, as did nothing else about him, that he had spent the night, the forenoon, encaged in his second line of commerce. They might have drawn thick curtains and blown out the lights, but that would not have helped him. The senses of Robert were doubly acute in the dark, and he could see in the dark, like a lynx. "Yes?" said the old man, looking at him blankly, as if at a tradesman. "Yes," said Robert, and came by him into the house. Elric did not stop him. Of course not. He allowed the young man, and all his blown gleamingness and his wretched roue' eyes to stroll across to the doors of the salon, and walk through. Elric followed. The blinds, a somber ivory color, were down, and the lamps had been lit; on a polished table hothouse flowers foamed from a jade bowl. A second door stood open on the small library, the soft glow of the lamps trembling over gold-worked spines, up and up a torrent of static, priceless books. Robert went into and around the library, and came out."I didn't take anything." "Can you even read?" snapped Elric Gorin remembering when he could not, a woodcutter's fifth son, an oaf and a sot, drinking his way or sleeping his way through a life without windows or vistas, a mere blackness of error and unrecognized boredom. Long ago. In that little town cobbled together under the forest. And the chateau with its starry lights, the carriages on the road, shinning, the dark trees either siude. And bowing in answer to had lifted a coin the day before......

Robert sat down, leaning back relaxedly in the chair. He was not relaxed, the old man knew. What was he tellign himself? That there was money here, eccentricity to be battened upon. The he could take her, the old woman, one way or another. There were always excuses that one could make to oneself.

When the Vampire entered the room, Robert, practiced, a gigolo, came to his feet. And the Vampire wa amused by him, gently now. She wore a bone white frock that had been sent from Paris last years. She had never worn it before. Pinned at the neck was a black velvet rose with a single drop of dew shivering on a single petal: a pearl that had come from the crown jewels of a czar. Her tact, her peerless tact. naturally, the pearl was saying, this is why you have come back. Naturally. There is nothing to fear. Elric Gorin left them. He returned later with decanters and glasses. The cold supper had been laid out by people from the city who handled such things, pate and lobster and chicken, lemon slices cut like flowers, organge slices like suns, tomatoes that were anemones, and oceans of green lettuce, and cold, glittering ice. He decanted the wines. He arranged the silver coffee service, theboxes of different cigarettes. The winter night had settled by then against the house, and, roused by the brilliantly lighted rooms, a moth was dashing itself between the candles and the colored fruits. The old man caught it in a crystal goblet, took it away, let it go into the darkness. For a hundred years andmore, he had never killed anything.