Beautiful Blood

One day while he sat beside a twenty-gallon tub of golden blood in the treatment room, entranced by its shifting patterns, it occurred to him that the reason for his lack of aging might be the massive injection of the dragon’s blood given him by the late Arthur Honeyman. And if such were the case, if a huge dose of the blood ameliorated the signs of aging and, perhaps, increased one’s longevity. If the effect were not peculiar to him, he could give a similar dose to Amelita and, once she became aware of its effect, that might have the secondary effect of enlivening her. None of this struck him with the force of a revelation—they were idle thoughts, merely—but he kept returning to them, re-examining them, and they acquired a revelatory power. Here was the answer to a question he had asked himself for decades: why had Griaule sought to distract him from his work? If he had arrived at this conclusion early on (it seemed impossible now that he had not) and, whether correct or incorrect, that conclusion had become known, there would have been a run on the blood by those desiring a longer prime of life. Despite his vast bulk, Griaule would have been drained, his veins and arteries emptied. Did the fact that the dragon had ceased distracting him from these ideas portend that he was prepared to die, or did he now trust in Rosacher’s devotion and so had offered up the remedy of his blood as a blessing to reward him for his faith? A myriad doctrinal questions attendant on that initial question arose, all of them casting doubt on his basic assumption, but in his eagerness to find a cure for his relationship with Amelita and to bring her the gift of an extended youth, he brushed them aside. That night, as she lay on their bed, naked beneath the peach-colored sheets, he sat next to her and spoke about his experience with the blood and explained what he intended to do, showing her a full syringe. She took the syringe from him and peered at the fluid—in the unsteady lantern light, the dark characters of the blood surfaced and faded with the elusiveness of eels, staying only long enough to give an impression of sinuous vigor before slipping away into their golden medium.

“Is this something you want?” she asked. “Am I not sufficiently beautiful?”

He had expected this kind of joyless reaction and advised her that the blood would not enhance her looks, merely maintain them longer than was usual.

“But is this what you want?”

“I thought it would please you,” he said. “Doesn’t every women wish to prolong her beauty?”

“I’ve always been beautiful,” she said. “I think it would be interesting to grow old and wrinkled.”

Impatient with her, he tried to take back the syringe; but she resisted him playfully and tucked the syringe beneath a pillow.

“Prove you love me,” she said. “And I’ll give it back.”

“After all these years,” he said, “I shouldn’t have to prove anything.”

“‘All these years?’” Her playful mien evaporated. “Has it been such a chore? Putting up with me?”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

She looked at him soberly. “You amaze me, Richard. You continually amaze me.”

He sought to make a joke of her comment. “That’s been my aim.”

“Well, you’ve succeeded. You’re a brothel keeper, a drug dealer, and you’re ruthless in your business practices. You’ve had people murdered. Yet you think of yourself as a good man. Most people are no different. We all engage in that sort of deceit, but we’re not as skilled at it as you. Your sins are so great, yet you hide the fact from yourself so thoroughly! It’s truly remarkable.”

Her words sliced into him and he said, “Damn it, ’lita! Must our pleasure always be held hostage to your morbid outlook on life.”

He made another try for the syringe and she pushed him away, this time with considerable force.

“You’re not a good man,” she said. “You don’t love me…except in the way most people love, and that isn’t really love, but a form of self-aggrandisement. I wish I had your talent for hiding from myself, for ignoring the realities—then I could love you the way you pretend to love me.”

“Then why are you with me? The money…is that it? The power. Do you find it exhilarating?”

“What I find exhilarating is that you’re so adept at deluding yourself, sometimes I’m able to believe the fairy tales you tell yourself.”

He wanted to reject her argument, her characterization of his feelings, but knew that to do so would only anger her further. Even if he submitted to her logic, she would be likely to mine a cause for disagreement from whatever he said.

She pulled back the sheet to expose a creamy thigh and pointed to it with the syringe. “This is where you would inject me?”

“Yes,” he said, encouraged—he thought she was relenting, deciding to relent, to allow them to go forward. “I’ll do it in the big muscle. It’ll sting, and there’ll be a sensation of cold, but that doesn’t last.”

“Apart from you,” she said, “has anyone else been injected with so much of the blood?”