The Watchtower

steely arms and shook it violently back and forth in an effort to break its neck. He could hear by its breath, corrugated as if rough metal rubbed against rust in its throat, that he hadn’t yet. So he bent it over the windowsill and tore its head back until he could hear, with a sound like a log being snapped in two, that he had broken its neck. He flung the carcass out the window. It fell onto the rocks below with an impact that seemed to make the tower shudder. Thunder had stopped and rain was slowing, and any liquid trace of the monster’s existence would dry into extinction by dawn, Will thought with grim satisfaction.
    With burgeoning confidence, he turned back to Dee and Roget and began walking slowly toward them. As he approached, though, Dee showed no sign of fear. “ This is your immortality, son of the devil Will Hughes,” he cackled, a grin smearing his features. “A vampire’s! Courtesy of one of the most special vampires in the world, Marduk, an esteemed creature whom you’ve seen fit to treat so shabbily. And after the favor he did for you! Shame on you, Hughes. Marduk will be missed—if he is really gone,” Dee added, turning to Roget. “Perhaps you ought to check, mon cher abbé, and see to the horses as well.”
    Will thought about trying to stop him, but let him go. His energy should be focused on this other fiend, Dee.
    Dee continued lecturing Will. “You’ll live forever of course, as long as you feed on blood at night and avoid the sun at all costs, for sunlight will burn you alive. Now I have a box and ring that will make me ruler of this mortal world, in addition to my occult kingdom.”
    Dee must have had a trapdoor of some sort behind the desk, for without another word he snatched the box and the ring and disappeared downward from Will’s sight.
    A vampire! Will knew something had gone terribly wrong but … a vampire! In those first shocked instants he failed to think about how limited the places Dee could have escaped to were and let him get away. If Will had dared to think that he himself might have the power to fly, or to glide through the air for distances, he might have exited by the window and caught his tormentor. But he had not even dreamed about such powers yet. He simply wanted his stolen life back—Marguerite as his lover, her property to return to her—for he knew he had been betrayed by Dee in the most insidious way, which included being tricked into betraying her.
    He raced, torn and breathless, bleeding from various wounds, incisors already growing, down the pitch-black, airless stairs. The storm, or Dee in flight, had snuffed out the torchlights. Then Will wandered around the base of the tower, confused, eyes scanning the horizon fruitlessly in every direction. He heard the sound of horses and saw, on the promontory above the beach, the silhouette of a coach racing up the north coast road. Dee had escaped him.
    Will felt a tingling in the roots of his incisors and touched those teeth cautiously with his fingertips. He recognized what was happening. “My Lord, I’m a night-sucking freak,” he exclaimed, sinking to his knees in the sand. He raised his face to the sky and let loose an anguished scream, rending his shirt to pieces in his distress. Yet, even at this worst moment of his existence—a wretched existence that would now spin out for centuries—the gift of poetry that his mentor had bequeathed him did not fail him. He felt the words rising up in his throat as if they leaped into being along with his new fangs.
    “My day now night, and night now day,
    eternity’s my enemy!
    Instead of solace, treachery.
    Instead of love, blood has its way!
    I am transformed to fanged grotesque,
    to stalker manic for new blood
    to savor, drink, at any risk,
    the thrill of veins my only mood.”
    When he had finished, he dropped his head … and saw a glint of gold in the sand. Could it be? Will reached down quickly for the metal object, grasping it in a handful of sand as if it alone might save him. Yes, it was! In his flight, Dee had dropped Marguerite’s ring! At least he had the ring back. With this he could try to approach her again! Perhaps she would know of some way to reverse this terrible curse. Or at least her companionship would make his existence bearable.

30
    Signal
    The trip to Pointe du Raz was fairly uneventful. We managed to hire a driver to take us when I balked at Will’s suggestion that I drive the coach. We told the driver that Will was