That's how I got to this city. Saint Ferno, the Mecca of vice created by the wild imagination of the Fallen. What was my first impression of it? It's hard to say. For me, this moment was forever bound up with the image of Alistair leaning toward me, hot lips and the red interior of the car swaying in the blur. I was drunk. For the first time in my life.

  I don't know if Alistair did it on purpose or not, but as we passed the entrance to the city, I couldn't tear my gutless, heavy body away from the seat to even look out the window. He had me sipping on the bottle again and again and ughed at my surprised eyes. I felt like I had lost my bones. I was spreading over Alistair's p like water, and he was plunging his hands into me, causing warm waves of desire to ripple through my body.

  That's how it felt to me. I closed my eyes, giving myself over to this new overwhelming feeling. Such was the booze of hell, and I had become forever addicted to it. Next thing I knew, Alistair was dragging me somewhere in his arms, and I didn't care anymore.

  I swayed to the beat of his steady steps, my head hanging limply. He lowered me onto the bck sheets and y beside me. In a haze of drunken, mindless images, he seemed to me a beautiful vision that beckoned me further and further away. And I followed him without hesitation.

  The entwining of hands, the trembling of belly, the silk of hair and the murmur of voices - all of it... I remembered nothing else. Perhaps that was all I needed to know about Saint Ferno. Alistair had immersed me in its true essence, hidden from the judicious eye, and I had fallen in love with the city. Exhausted, I fell serenely asleep under its twilight veil. I knew that the morning could not destroy the captivating charm of its midnight delirium, the incessant whisper of tempting voices ...

  I don't remember how long that night sted before I wanted to wake up. Rising on my elbows, I regarded Alistair with interest for some time. His head leaning against my shoulder, his face hidden by his hair. Its colour still fascinated me. I touched a dark strand and kissed it. Alistair didn't move. He slept tightly, like a child. Now, in the light of the reddish nightlight, he looked younger than before.

  ‘I love you,’ I whispered.

  He mumbled something in his sleep and rolled over, tangled in the fine bck fabric of the sheets. I sat up on the bed and looked around. I remember being struck by the vastness of his house. The huge room, with a high ceiling from which dainty candebras hung, was decorated with a rge number of frameless photos. The scenes depicted in them made me exhale in embarrassment. It was a true gallery, an ode to demonic love. Beautiful bodies, faces, the frankness of the poses.....

  I found out ter that they were pictures of his many lovers. Alistair took a perverse pleasure in surrounding himself with their faces. Filling the very air of his bedroom with them as if they never left. Perhaps he was afraid of being alone. To be robbed, even for a moment, of the charm of this frozen orgy. He didn't like being alone. Unlike me. I learned to enjoy it by intentionally evoking a longing that tugged at my soul. A longing that made me go out on the road again and again, savour the fleeting meetings and fall back into myself.

  Alistair did not understand that. He smiled sarcastically and said something like:

  ‘The Fallen are all fwed, you've never enough,’ and waved his hand.

  But I liked the pristine nature of my inner world, and I didn't respond to his outbursts. I always had something that was beyond his reach. He knew it. And he obsessively sought to suppress me.

  Maybe it was because of this quirk of the Fallen that I never woke him if I woke up first. And I was always surprised to find myself awakened by the unceremonious touch with which he insistently fished me out of the fog of dreams if I lingered too long.

  I didn't understand how one could not appreciate the exquisite solitude that repced the heat of the night. That subtle tranquil state on the edge of feeling, when you get up from your bed and quietly make your way to the balcony. Or go down to the garden and, cut off from everyone, revel in the transparency of unclouded zy thoughts, and know that now you belong only to yourself. You flick your lighter carelessly, lighting your first cigarette. Then close your eyes, enjoying the indifferent breeze caressing your body and the smoke of the first puff tickling your lungs.

  Later you get caught up again in the weave of awakening desires and swept away, but this moment belongs only to you. That's why I like to wake up first.

  I smiled at my sleepy lover and got out of bed. Almost ankle-deep in the soft, wine-coloured carpet, as vulgar as Alistair himself, I walked over to the huge mirror that adorned the wall opposite the wide bed. And for the first time I saw myself as I still am.

  I moved smoothly, with a zy graceful grace. My body was an extension of my thoughts. And I was thinking of only one thing: the pleasure I had experienced and the pleasure to come. For the first time I was self-loving myself, condescendingly acknowledging my own beauty. I loved my body - the embrace of merged youthful muscles, the light, innocent skin, the narrow, stubborn thighs, the straightness of my legs and the haughty delicacy of my fingers. I was crazy about myself, like Narcissus.

  I sat down in front of the mirror and studied my face. Somewhere behind me was Alistair's bck bed, but my eyes were unimaginably darker than the silk of his sheets. In them flickered the abyss I'd dared to bridge. Its depth and the sparks of the fme that danced in it remained forever in my eyes, as if my convulsively open pupil could still see it. My eyes used to be lighter. But no one and never had I seen eyes so horrifyingly bck as those ter in Ferno's portrait. It was as if the abyss he had to cross was infinitely deeper and a hundred times more terrible than the one I had known. I did not want to imagine the height he had lost in the name of his madness.

  I rubbed my skin with my finger, pleased to feel its inviting velvety softness. Then I ruffled my hair and stood up, kissing my reflection. My curiosity was piqued, and I wanted to see more than the walls of this bedroom, where I was going to spend many stormy nights.

  The night never ended here, though. Time was a ghost, defined only by the change from darkness to deep twilight and vice versa. I saw a deep opening at the far end of the bedroom, covered with red curtains. Cautiously I approached and pull them open. There was a door to the balcony, and I opened it with impatience, letting in the sounds and smells of this new world.

  Alistair stirred in bed, but he didn't wake, and I slipped silently outside into the thick, dark blue twilight of San Ferno. By the looks of it, Alistair owned the whole house. Downstairs I saw a wide, empty, ntern-lit yard with a swimming pool. Somewhere beyond the twisted fence breathed the city, tempting me to plunge into its teeming insanity. But I froze warily at the railing, sniffing the air like an animal in a wrong hole. I decided to wait until Alistair awoke to ask him more about this pce before I ventured into its maelstrom.

  But that's not what happened. Alistair woke up without me on our first twilight morning. I've said before that I never liked to be afraid. And I certainly couldn't be afraid of Bde.