Music of the Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

have time to walk over to the zoo.
    There was a fair crowd there for a weekday. Well-groomed young matrons pushed clean, floppy babies in strollers. Weyland she spotted at once.
    He was leaning against the railing that enclosed the seals’ shelter and their murky green pool. His jacket, slung over his shoulder, draped elegantly down his long back. Floria thought him rather dashing and faintly foreign-looking. Women who passed him, she noticed, tended to glance back. He looked at everyone. She had the impression that he knew quite well that she was walking up behind him.
    “Outdoors makes a nice change from the office, Edward,” she said, coming to the rail beside him. “But there must be more to this than a longing for fresh air.” A fat seal lay in sculptural grace on the concrete, eyes blissfully shut, fur drying in the sun to a translucent water-color umber. Weyland straightened from the rail. They walked. He did not look at the animals; his eyes moved continually over the crowd. He said, “Someone has been watching for me at your office building.”
    “Who?”
    “There are several possibilities. Pah, what a stench—though humans caged in similar circumstances smell as bad.” He sidestepped a couple of shrieking children who were fighting over a balloon and headed out of the zoo under the musical clock.
    They walked the uphill path northward through the park. By extending her own stride a little Floria found that she could comfortably keep pace with him.
    “Is it peasants with torches?” she said. “Following you?”
    He said, “What a childish idea.”
    All right, try another tack, then: “You were telling me last time about hunting in the Ramble. Can we return to that?”
    “If you wish.” He sounded bored—a defense? Surely—she was certain this must be the right reading—surely his problem was a transmutation into “vampire” fantasy of an unacceptable aspect of himself. For men of his generation the confrontation with homosexual drives could be devastating.
    “When you pick up someone in the Ramble, is it a paid encounter?”
    “Usually.”
    “How do you feel about having to pay?” She expected resentment.
    He gave a faint shrug. “Why not? Others work to earn their bread. I work, too, very hard, in fact. Why shouldn’t I use my earnings to pay for my sustenance?”
    Why did he never play the expected card? Baffled, she paused to drink from a fountain. They walked on.
    “Once you’ve got your quarry, how do you . . .” She fumbled for a word.
    “Attack?” he supplied, unperturbed. “There’s a place on the neck, here, where pressure can interrupt the blood flow to the brain and cause unconsciousness. Getting close enough to apply that pressure isn’t difficult.”
    “You do this before, or after any sexual activity?”
    “Before, if possible,” he said aridly, “and instead of.” He turned aside to stalk up a slope to a granite outcrop that overlooked the path they had been following. There he settled on his haunches, looking back the way they had come. Floria, glad she’d worn slacks today, sat down near him. He didn’t seem devastated—anything but. Press him, don’t let him get by on cool. “Do you often prey on men in preference to women?”
    “Certainly. I take what is easiest. Men have always been more accessible because women have been walled away like prizes or so physically impoverished by repeated childbearing as to be unhealthy prey for me. All this has begun to change recently, but gay men are still the simplest quarry.” While she was recovering from her surprise at his unforeseen and weirdly skewed awareness of female history, he added suavely, “How carefully you control your expression, Dr. Landauer—no trace of disapproval.”
    She did disapprove, she realized. She would prefer him not to be committed sexually to men. Oh, hell. He went on, “Yet no doubt you see me as one who victimizes the already victimized. This is the world’s way. A wolf brings