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She took the handle with both hands and brought it forth in a wide sure sweep "I wish I had an enemy," she cried out, "as ready to die "

I looked at Marius He looked at me No, she couldn't be one of us

"That would be too selfish," he whispered in my ear

I couldn't help but wonder, if I had not been dying aftersickness had not taken me over, would he have ever made me a vampire?

The three of us hurried down the stone steps to the quay There was our canopied gondola waiting Marius gave the address

"Are you sure you want to go there, Master?" asked the gondolier, shocked because he knew the district where the worst of the foreign seaht

"Most sure of it," he said

As we moved off in the black waters, I putback on the cushions, I felt invulnerable, i would ever defeat me or Marius, and in our care Bianca would always be safe

How very wrong I was

Nine ether after our trip to Kiev Nine or maybe ten, I cannot mark the climax by any exterior event Let me say only, before I proceed to bloody disaster, that Bianca was alith us in those lastupon the carousers, ere in our house, where Marius painted her portraits, devising her as this or that goddess, as the Biblical Judith with the head of the Florentine for her Holofernes, or as the Virgin Mary staring rapt at a tiny Christ child, as perfectly rendered by Marius as any ie he ever made

Those pictures-perhaps some of them endure to this very day

One night, when all slept except for the three of us, Bianca, about to give up on a couch as Marius painted, sighed and said, "I like your coo home "

Would that she had loved us less Would that she had not been there on the fatal evening in 1499, just before the turn of the century, when the High Renaissance was in its glory, ever to be celebrated by artists and historians, would that she had been safe when our world went up in flames

Chapter 14

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