13
And Closer
Again he sniffed the air. Now he cursed and moved down the street, shambling slightly. Something pushed him away from that house, the house he remembered, but he sensed there would be others.
It was to be even easier than that, however.
Two streets away, a young man called Stefan made a fatal mistake. In fact he had made several, each worse than the last. First, he had decided to spend the evening in the inn, where he had got very drunk with his friends. Second, he had played cards all night, and for some reason had lost every hand, and almost a week’s wages—all the money he had in the world. Then he’d decided to stay in the inn when his friends left together, and to drink until his credit ran out.
Eventually the innkeeper had thrown him out. It was a cold night, but not snowing, and the ground was a mess of old snow and mud and footprints. Stefan had been shuffling home, too drunk still to be miserable about his evening, when he saw someone in front of him, no more than arm’s length away.
Stefan puzzled for a moment to place who it was.
“Crista!” he announced, pleased he had remembered.
It was the draper, the one with the pretty daughter. What was her name? He couldn’t remember at first, then it came to him.
“And how is little Agnes?”
The draper said nothing, and then slowly, very slowly, it occurred to Stefan that there was something strange about seeing Constantin Crista here. If only he could remember what—
Faster than a cat could blink, Stefan flew back against the wall. Crista leant in, pressing him back, holding the young man’s head away to one side with one hand, while using his other arm to hold him fast. He leant his head in closer, his mouth nearing Stefan’s neck.
His lips, now just a finger’s breadth away, parted, and then Crista stuck his tongue out, straight through the skin, right into the artery.
For a moment Stefan struggled to realize he was dying.