Ad Eternum Read Online Free PDF Page A

consideration. The decision to trust. Yes, he is a wampyr. Does that mean he is not also an honorable man?
    Damian said, “No one’s waiting for me.”
    That hung between them for a moment, in soft silence and the dry warmth from the automobile’s heaters.
    “Will you come in to my house, Damian Thomas?” the wampyr asked, with intentional solemnity. He did not care to be mistaken in such things. He was too old for screaming.
    Damian paused, hands on the wheel. In a conversational tone, he asked, “How much does it hurt?”
    “As I recollect,” the wampyr said, “it was most exquisitely pleasurable. But then, my memories of such ancient days are dim.”
    “I see,” said Damian. “You need this?”
    “I will not die without it,” the wampyr said. “But that I cannot die of starvation does not mean I cannot starve.”
    The automobile sat idling by the curve for thirty seconds. Ninety.
    Damian reached out and turned off the key. “A scientist should always be eager for new experiences,” he said.
     

     
    The wampyr brought the sorcerer up the sweep of his front steps and into that ridiculous foyer. He moved surely in the darkness; the human was hesitant, and not yet accustomed to trusting the wampyr’s sure hand on his elbow.
    “Where’s the light switch?” Damian asked, moving each foot forward as if probing for what he might trip over.
    “Not yet installed,” the wampyr said. Swiftly, he crossed the room and opened the shades, that the light from the streetlamps might filter in. “I last inhabited this house in 1902. And the gas is turned off, currently.”
    “I wasn’t born yet,” Damian said, as if he’d only just started to consider the implications. “When last you were in America.”
    “When last I was in America,” the wampyr said, “The state of New Netherlands was the colony of New Holland, and a British protectorate. If you’re going to let that trouble you—”
    “I’m just not used to it,” Damian said.
    His pulse raced with apprehension, anticipation. Curiosity. Not desire—not yet , the wampyr judged, but perhaps…
    “Trust me,” the wampyr said, and led Damian to a settee. It might have looked ridiculous, a man so much smaller pressing one larger to sit, to lean back. To let his head fall against the pillows.
    The wampyr let his dry, light hands rest against Damian’s shoulders. “I do not usually drink from the throat,” he said. “It makes a scar that shows. May I remove your coat?”
    Silently, shaking, Damian sat forward. The wampyr slid the jacket from his shoulders, untacked and unknotted his tie, unbuttoned the once-pressed shirt now rumpled with a long day’s wear. He laid each article of clothing across the arm of the settee. Damian watched his movements with a focus that told the wampyr his mortal friend saw nothing, now, but a moving patch of darkness in a lesser dark, leavened by reflections from the streetlights.
    It might be worse for Damian, being blind. The wampyr could go and find a candle—
    But soonest begun was first ended. Even in such dim light, the wampyr had no problem picking out the outlines of Damian’s sorcerer’s tattoos, though the red ink faded into the darkness of his skin. The wampyr laid his hand against Damian’s chest and felt the beat of his heart.
    “This will be less…invasive,” the wampyr said, “if you lay your arm along the back of the settee.”
    The sorcerer laughed. “You do realize how ridiculous what you just said is?”
    “Or I could sit on your lap,” the wampyr said.
    Damian laid a hand over his and did not respond directly. “I thought you would be…clammy.”
    “Cold, sometimes,” the wampyr said.
    “But I did not think you would feel so…dry.”
    “You expected a fresh corpse.”
    “No, I—” His laugh was a nervous hiccough. “Yes. I guess I did. You are—”
    “I have been dead,” the wampyr said, “since before the Reconquista. Dead and incorruptible. It is what it is.”
    “I guess