Though his mind had been reeling during his visit to Hannibal's home, the aftermath is marked by a notable clarity. On the slushy road home, in the heated womb of the van, his retrospection is sharp.

The meal itself had been a carefully staged examination. Hannibal had wanted to see him, to watch him in a setting more intimate than their therapy sessions. Francis knew at once that he had been meant to perform in a certain way, to rise to the level of the test. The process had grown gradually easier and more assured until Hannibal had begun touching him, then all had cracked to pieces like mirror glass.

In the aftermath, here, the mirror is not reassembling itself but clicking shard by shard out of the frame, revealing what is below. Francis sees the sketch on Hannibal's dining room wall—the sharp demarcations forming a vessel for riotous color that both softens those lines and at the same time deepens their intent. He decides he must see the painting in a larger format. Perhaps in its original. He'll have to find it, travel to see it. Living in Grandmother's house rather than an apartment in the city has afforded him the ability to save quite a bit of money.

He sees Hannibal—clearly now and not through the fog of pleasure-shame—on his knees before him. Willing, eager. Paying him homage.

After he'd come in Hannibal's mouth, he could have leaned over, bestowed a kiss on the man's forehead. He could have taken his slim throat between his hands and throttled the life out of him right there on his expensive rug.

Francis had done neither, but sees now that both and more were possible.

When he reaches his house, he is at the same time eager for another dream and entirely unable to sleep. He places the leather-bound Bible next to his weight bench, then goes to the bathroom to remove and soak his bridge. The medicine cabinet over the sink remains open as it always does, the mirrored door facing the wall, displaying yellowing plastic shelves rather than showing Francis his own face.

You are exquisite, Francis.

The appliance clatters into a clean glass, which is filled with water. Two tablets of cleaning solution hiss in afterward. Grandmother's teeth remain where he left them, askew in their own glass. He takes them out and, not without hesitation, pulls the door of the medicine cabinet to. The disused hinges scream.

Wincing at the reflection that stares back at him, Francis holds the dentures in front of his face, far enough forward that they cover nearly his entire mouth, scar and all. They look like a rusted scythe embedded in his flesh, and that for once is a rupture with which he can cope. The one that constantly haunts him returns when he lowers the teeth again, and he knocks the medicine cabinet door back toward the wall, where it slams and shudders.

Grandmother's teeth go back into their cup.

If only you could see what I see.

In the attic studio, he strips naked, peeling the briefs gingerly away from his sticky skin. Francis examines himself for signs of Hannibal's presence, his attentions, but there appear to be none. It is as if he remains untouched.

He lays on his back on the vinyl bench, grasping the old, worn metal of the barbell for chest presses.

Five...ten…

After Francis had left the house, what had Hannibal done? Had he remained in the sitting room, sipping his wine? Had he cleaned up the dinner dishes? Had he touched himself the way Francis did when he needed release?

Fifteen...twenty…

It is difficult to picture Hannibal behaving in such an undignified manner—legs splayed, trousers around his ankles, rutting into his hand. Francis flushes and bites down on his lip until he tastes blood.

Twenty-five…

Will he be expected to do the same for Hannibal at some point? It is both too easy and too upsetting to imagine himself on his knees before Hannibal in the soft darkness of his office, taking what is offered. Trying to. He is desperate to know what Hannibal was thinking while he was performing the act. Was he envisioning cleaving him apart, filling his hands with Francis's bright red blood while Francis filled his throat in his ineffectual death throes? No, impossible. Only Francis's thoughts were bad like that, wrong like that.

He growls behind clenched teeth and hangs the bar back up on its hooks.

Thirty...pathetic.

He sits up and howls into the close dimness, muscles seemingly too slack to push.

No.

Francis reaches for his wallet and fumbles out the picture of Andy's family with sweaty fingers. His breath makes the paper sway as he holds it. Helen Jacobi is looking beyond the camera, the two spots of red on her round cheeks vibrant, insistent.

Francis is able to take a deep breath at last. He sets the picture atop the Bible and lays down once again, taking up the bar.

After some calls around, he has managed to locate a print of The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun. It is a replica on archival-quality paper dug from the stores at the Baltimore Museum of Art shop. Francis had initially been crushed that he had missed the museum's Blake retrospective several months ago, but was informed it had not featured any of the Great Red Dragon paintings. This print was only a commercial ploy, and it seemed one that had failed more or less considering the excess inventory.

He has arranged to view it before work and is steeling himself for the inevitable side-eyed looks and fumbling dialogue with the clerk at the shop.

Parking at one of the meters in the dedicated visitors' circle on Art Museum Drive, he dons his jacket and goes squinting out into the midday sunlight. To the left of the museum building proper is a small gathering of people. Francis sees a couple of television cameras set up on tripods, a few smartly dressed on-location reporters shivering without coats. A path leading into a tree-lined area is cordoned off with yellow police tape, and a lone officer stands tacit guard alongside it.

No one pays attention to Francis as he stands and stares for a few moments. Then he snugs on his knit hat and walks toward the Neoclassical marble entrance.

Fortunately, the shop is just inside the glass double doors, through a metal detector. The fat woman at the desk stares with moon-eyes as she informs him that he won't need to buy a ticket if he's just going into the store. Francis thanks her nonetheless.

There is a young man with patchy facial hair standing behind the shop's checkout counter. Francis is the only patron, but it is a weekday and traffic in the museum will be slow. The man does a double-take.

"Are you the clerk I spoke with yes—the day before?" Francis asks.

He shakes his head. "I don't think so, man. Is something wrong?"

"I'm the one who ordered the print. The William Blake."

Then the clerk's face breaks into a half-smile. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, Colin told me about that. Said you'd be picking it up today."

"May I look at it?"

For a moment the clerk doesn't move. "Oh, sure, sure." He looks around Francis's broad shoulders on both sides to see that there aren't any other patrons, then shoots a look at the cash register.

Francis clenches his teeth, the bridge moving slightly.

"Hold on," the clerk says. A few moments later he emerges from the back room with a cardboard tube, which he extends toward Francis.

"Can you take it out...please?"

"Yeah, yeah. Sure." The clerk knocks the open end of the tube once, hard against his palm, then reaches inside and pulls the rolled paper from within. The edges are ragged, most likely meant to make it look as though it is printed on handmade stock.

Francis's heart begins to thump.

The clerk unrolls the print, which is larger than Francis expected, probably larger than the painting itself. "Is this the one you wanted?"

Underneath the knobby, unworthy fingers, the Dragon emerges: horns, wings, the seemingly impossible muscles of his back and hindquarters. Below, Francis can see the yellow-orange glow, the hair of the Woman Clothed in Sun as it whips in the wind of the fierce Dragon's wings.

He allows the corners of his mouth to curl upward a little. "Mm-hm."

"Great, great," the clerk tells him. "You want me to roll it up for you?"

"Mm-hm."

"I don't know if Colin told you, but it's forty-five. Fifty-one fourteen with tax."

"Fine," Francis says, pulling out his wallet. He panics internally for a moment when he realizes the picture of Helen Jacobi is not in there, after which he realizes that he has used it to mark the start of the Book of Revelation in Hannibal's Bible, which is in the passenger seat of the van. He wonders if he shouldn't have left it in there.

The clerk gives another strained smile after he rings up the transaction. Francis pays cash.

"You work security?" the man asks, looking at Francis's uniform underneath his jacket.

"Uh-huh."

"I bet nobody fucks around on your watch."

Francis doesn't want to leave the print in the van, even hidden from view in the windowless back section, so he brings it into the guard station with him, holding it in the crook of his arm as he greets Levon. The Bible is in his other hand.

"Whatcha reading, my man?"

Francis says nothing, but he does place the heavy book on the top of the guard desk. Someone has cleared away the dead and dying flowers from the table by the coffee pot.

"Ahh," Levon says with a huge smile. "The Good Book. Feel the need to brush up on your faith? I re-read it cover to cover once every two or three years. Honestly, with that tiny print, it's all my eyes can handle. But I'd read it every year if I could. Do you go to church?"

Francis shakes his head. He doesn't want to get into this with Levon, or with anyone else.

"I admit I don't go as often as I should," Levon continues. "But there are other places to worship."

Francis sees in his mind the shadowy, leather-scented sitting room in Hannibal's home. He tastes the dry Riesling on his tongue. "Other places," he says, then turns to take his seat behind the desk, sliding the print in its cardboard tube into the footwell. Though Levon is eyeing it as it disappears from his sight, he says nothing, and for this Francis is grateful.

Both he and Hammond exit for the afternoon with little fanfare, leaving Francis to his screens and his thoughts. So entranced he is with the very fact of the painting's presence at his feet that it takes him several minutes to recognize that now the upper right-hand screen is showing clearly, as well.

He runs his hands for long moments over the embossing on the cover before he is able to muster the courage to open it. The first few pages of onionskin rustle in the canned air from the heating vent and a rich smell of old paper drifts upward. Francis shudders. He remembers the moldering old Bible that Grandmother kept by her bedside. He'd felt its solid bulk across his face on more than one occasion, more often than not knocking him to the ground.

Naughty boys burn in Hell. You, Francis: you were born bad.

I know, he thinks, and begins to read.

The language is flowery, poetic, and sometimes strange. And yet the imagery is sometimes terribly simplistic, inherent in it those things that awed pre-modern man: weather, riches, fire. These things, Francis thinks, still have the power to awe and to control. We only pretend that they can't, and maybe that's the greater ignorance.

His heartbeat quickens, loud in his ears as he reads over the portions that Hannibal recited to him after their dinner. Terrors spoken as words of affection. Come and see.

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.

Francis read and re-read the line. There had been an earthquake in his dream—marking the waking of the dragon.

Suddenly energized, he skims the lines for the word. There...at last.

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

Francis chewed the inside of his cheek. He was somewhat annoyed with the idea of the child. It had been impossible for him to tell when looking at any of the Blake paintings on Hannibal's iPad that the woman was pregnant. She seemed pale and plump, shining and full of life, like Helen Jacobi. Francis had wanted the painting to represent the meeting of the woman and the great dragon alone on the great black and star-filled field of Blake's imagination.

As he reads on, though, the fate of the child seems to matter little if at all. It was, apparently, "caught up to the throne of God," but instead the dragon went on in his pursuit of the woman, even after being cast out of Heaven. This pleases Francis.

If not for the sudden phlegmy rattle of the heating system into momentary dormancy, Francis would not have looked up from the book to see the group moving toward the Life Sciences building. Carl is there, the top of his balding head showing stark white. The woman that Reba called Peggy is there, as well, moving a few paces behind Carl. But she has no one on her arm. Francis watches as one by one the figures slip from the camera's view. Reba is not among them.

He feels his heart hammering in his chest once again. Perhaps she has quit the study; perhaps it is too difficult after all for a blind woman to make her way across the city to be poked at and prodded by undergraduate students. Francis suppresses the urge to call Hannibal.

Instead, he rises from behind the desk, leaving the Bible but taking the print. He'll just check to see that she has arrived safely at room 504 of the Life Sciences building, if she is in fact there. He hopes.

Without his jacket, he expects discomfort in the open breezeway, but his blood is circulating too wildly at the thought of Reba's absence for him to register the cold. Warm air boils out when he opens the door to the tunnel and suddenly he is sweating, moisture dripping between his shoulder blades to the small of his back, pooling at the line where his belt cinches.

Francis takes the elevator to the fifth floor. The room in which the studies are taking place is full of participants, talking in hushed tones. A man emerges from a neighboring room, holding a clipboard. He is very diminutive, with a small goatee, and he stops dead when he sees Francis standing outside the door, peering in.

"Is everything all right, officer?" the man says, erroneously assuming Francis is with the police.

He looks for just one moment more, not having seen Reba's lovely face, her staring eyes. Maybe—maybe—she is the one in the adjacent room. He grits his teeth and turns to the small man.

"Wrong room," he says.

"Which one are you looking for?" the man calls after him, but Francis has already turned and is headed back to the elevator. In the hallway leading to the tunnel, he stops when he sees a blur of white, orange, and black on a wall-mounted bulletin board. The image is the face of a roaring tiger, its white ruff and teeth huge.

Opportunity for Biology students! the flyer reads. Zoo Baltimore is keeping a Bengal tiger for rehabilitation for a LIMITED TIME ONLY. Zoo staff invites UB biology majors to observe while he is under sedation. Contact for more details.

Underneath the poster is a fringe of tiny paper tabs, half of them torn away, each printed with a name and an email address. Francis is not sure why, but he takes one and slips it into his wallet, holding the cardboard tube containing the print under his arm.

There is someone in the guard station when he returns. Someone in a uniform, though Francis doesn't recognize him. He is young and very slim, the clothing baggy on his frame. The young man begins to smile, then it falters. He actually shakes his head as if to clear an offensive image.

"You manning the desk?" he asks Francis, at long last.

Francis nods.

Both stand for a few beats, unsure of where to take the nascent conversation.

"Are you at the garage?" Francis asks.

"Yeah," he says, extending a hand. "Andre."

Taking Andre's hand in his, Francis imagines for a brief moment clamping down, breaking the bones like bird legs, twisting the wrist free of its cartilaginous moorings. He doesn't. "People call me 'D,'" he says.

"Good to meet you, D. Are you the guy who does the coffee?"

Looking past Andre's shoulder, he sees that the stained coffee pot is empty, the sticky residue of the last batch burning into the bottom of the carafe on the still-hot warming plate.

"No."

"Gotcha, gotcha." It is clear Andre is uncomfortable. "I shouldn't drink any more anyway." He could easily make another pot, but he likely does not want to be in Francis's presence as it brews, to be forced to make conversation. "Catch you later," he says, and walks out the door, dry, cold air swirling in behind him.

In his bed, freshly showered after a punishing training session, Francis wakes from a dream. The cardboard tube—as yet unopened—lies beside him. He reaches out for it on instinct, groping with trembling fingers.

He had been walking the same dark landscape, though the faint moon this time had been the bloody orb of Revelation. Past the blood-filled stream, he looked for Reba in the place where she should have been. Instead, there lay the skin of a tiger, complete with head, paws, and tail, its eyes replaced with milk-pale marbles.

Francis had bent to touch it. The fur was almost unimaginably soft under his fingertips. He both expected and did not expect the first tremor, which made the loose soil around the tiger's skin dance like a drum head. Without lungs, still the tiger had moaned, its false eyes rolling.

Francis stood and stepped over the skin, leaving it behind him. As conspicuous as Reba's absence was that of Grandmother, though there was no wolf skin in her stead.

In the clearing, the Dragon had squatted on its mountain pedestal. It was now, of course, Blake's Dragon, its seven heads all with teeth grinding, filling the air with the squeals of cleaving rock. Between its enormous legs hung a huge penis, red and rampant. Frances had clenched his fists, but had not run. None of the heads were looking at him, anyway. They all faced heavenward, and Francis followed its many gazes to a point of light above the moon. The earth shook again as the Dragon whipped its tail upward, swiping the point of light from its far perch and sending it hurtling toward the earth.

It appeared as a fiery golden comet, and in the circle of flame, Helen Jacobi lay curled, her eyes shut tight against the vertigo of her descent. Instead of shattering on impact with the ground, she burst from the womb of the comet into blazing life. The flushed spots on her cheeks were novae, brighter than her eyes.

She hovered in the air between Francis and the Dragon. So entranced he had been by her appearance that he had failed to see for a long time that the Dragon's heads now looked at him. In their eyes was not rage or condemnation but a sort of interrogative curiosity. As though it asked permission.

Yes, Francis said within his dream-mind, but his dream-body shook its head insistently. He had woken to the echoes of the Dragon's multi-voiced roar.

The following evening, Francis does not bring either the print or the Bible to work, though he checks the locks on the front door of the house three times before he is satisfied enough to leave.

The low sky threatens rain during the long drive into the city; Francis can smell it on the wind. Thankfully, Levon makes no mention of his lack of reading material. Soon he and Hammond depart and the guard station belongs to Francis alone.

At five o'clock, he catches sight of motion in the hallway to the Life Sciences building. He leans closer to the screen. Again, Carl leads the group that passes the camera, but there—on Peggy's arm just as before—is Reba, holding her cane and smiling faintly. Francis smiles back, a full grin that stretches the scar.

A few moments before six, the rain comes. It batters the windows, the attendant wind moving the rubber seal on the door like breath.

At seven-thirty, the group involved in the study meanders back up the hallway. Francis is disconcerted by the fact that Reba is now on Carl's arm. They stop in the middle of the hallway, just below the camera's eye, and exchange words. Francis tries to make out what they're saying but fails. What he does see is Reba trying to wrest her arm from Carl's grip.

Convinced he needs no context, Francis gets up out of his chair and jogs out toward the building. He meets the group just as they walk out into the rain, which thrums on the aluminum roof of the breezeway.

Reba is no longer holding onto Carl's arm. She is bringing up the rear of the group, tapping her cane with short, percussive strokes.

"Is there a problem here?" Francis asks.

"What? No," says Carl.

"The lady would prefer to walk alone," Francis tells him. Beyond the huddled group, being spattered by droplets, Reba raises her head.

"What the hell? I don't understand what you're saying. Look, buddy, we're all getting wet here. Can you let us by?"

Francis steps to the side, but Carl does not pass him. Instead, he circles back to Reba. "C'mon, kiddo," he says to her. "Let's get you home."

"I have a ride, Carl," she says, avoiding his grip as deftly as if she can see him reaching for her.

"I thought you said you were going to take the bus."

"I have a ride, okay? Thanks, but...go ahead."

Just past Francis, the rest of the group is waiting, still huddled together, each sporting the half-frightened, half-expectant look that spectators to a possible scuffle wear.

Carl begins to walk again, but Reba stands still. "Okay," he says. "Suit yourself." He shoots a look at Francis as he walks on.

Reluctant to speak for a moment, Francis says as the group walks away, "You can wait for your ride in the guard...hut."

After a moment, Reba ventures a smile. "Thanks. I'll do that."

Just before the door of the guards' station, Reba gives a forced little giggle. "I lied," she said.

"Huh?" Francis asks.

"I lied to Carl. I don't have a ride. If I could just wait in here until the rain lets up, I'll grab the next bus."

Before Francis is able to censor himself, the same words as before are out of his mouth: "I'll take you."

"Pardon?"

"I'll take you home. Give you a ride. Home." He grimaces, glad that she is unable to see it.

"Oh, no, that's okay, D."

"Please," he sounds out carefully. "You'll get wet."

"Oh...I really couldn't possibly. Don't you have to work?"

"Andre can come in." The lie is easy.

Another gust blows cold rain into their faces. "Gosh," Reba says. "Are you sure?"

"Mm-hm. Yes." He opens the door for her and ushers her inside. "Wait here. I'll get the van." Turning his collar up against the rain, Francis runs toward the uncovered employee parking lot. Inside the van, The Power of Myth still sits in the passenger seat. Francis tosses it into the back, where it lands with a hollow thud.

He takes off his jacket even though the cold torrent stings his skin, and holds it over Reba's head as they walk the few feet to the idling van at the curb. It is only when they are settled inside that he hesitates for a moment. If anyone finds out he has left his post he could lose his job. Reba is looking forward through the windshield, expectant as if she can see the road ahead. Francis's heart clenches and he puts the transmission in 'drive.'

It turns out that she lives, as might be expected, in Taylor Heights very close to the School for the Blind. The small yellow duplex borders the park.

"Right or left?" Francis asks.

"Right," Reba says. "Are we here already?"

"Mm-hm. The rain has let up a little."

"I'm sure I could have gotten the bus."

"I—I didn't mean—"

Reba laughs. "I'm teasing you, D. You gotta lighten up." She fumbles for the door handle.

"Let me," Francis says.

Reba seems to know exactly where the smooth, paved walk branches off toward her own front door. She tucks her cane beneath her arm and digs a set of keys out of her coat pocket.

Francis watches with wonder as she runs a finger down the edge of each key until she finds the one she wants.

The interior is homey and smells faintly of baked goods. Reba nearly disappears in the dark interior, then about-faces and fumbles at the wall for the light switch.

"Did that come on?" she asks. "Obviously I don't use it much. I can't tell if the bulb's out."

She is so, so lovely in the buttery light. "Uh-huh. I can see." There is a yellow floral sofa, lace curtains by the breakfast nook. Things Francis has seen on television, but not in real life.

Reba relaxes at once into the familiar environment, leaving her cane by the door. "I had a friend help me decorate. Help," she says, "hell. She did all of the decorating. I hope it isn't too terrible."

Francis shakes his head, but then remembers that she can't see. "Nice," he tells her. "Will you be okay?"

"This is my sanctum sanctorum. I'll be just fine." She stops mid-step on her way into the kitchen. "Are you sure you can't stay for some pie? I just made it. Well, earlier today."

"I sh—I need to get back."

"Please, D? I have to thank you somehow. I promise it's good. I'll even try it before you do if you don't believe me."

Francis pictures the empty guard desk, the flickering screens—three now showing sharp and defined, the rest their usual stew of quivering static. He inhales and expects the smell of wilted flowers, linoleum cleaner, burned coffee. Reba has already removed a glass pie pan from the cool oven. "Okay," he says.

"Great." Her smile is a revelation. "I'll make coffee, too, if you have time."

He catches himself mid-nod. "Uh-huh. Yeah."

When the coffeemaker has begun its hissing and spitting, Reba returns to her pie. "Big slice or little slice? Wait, don't tell me. Big."

Anything you want. "Mm-hm."

She grins again. "You must eat like a horse. I'm sorry. Was that rude? I just kind of let all my inhibitions slip when I'm in my element here at home."

"No," Francis said. "Not rude."

Her fingertips quivering on the butter-sheened crust, Reba placed a hefty slice of the pecan pie on a plate and slid it across the counter in the general direction of Francis's voice. "Ah yeah," she said. "Fork."

The mouthful he takes is sweet on his tongue, almost unbearably so. "Good," he says. "Very."

"How do you take your coffee?"

"However."

Reba stops, knife in hand, one side of her mouth quirked up.

He could so easily take the sliver of steel from her fingers...no.

"You're a hard man to read, D." She places the knife on the counter where it gives a short metallic ring. "Can I ask you a weird question?"

Francis says nothing.

"Can I touch your face?" she asks. "I can't tell by the tone of your voice. I just...want to know if you're smiling or frowning." She reaches toward him, but he catches her fingertips gently in his hand. Reba is the only one of them who wears a smile.

"Take my word that I'm smiling," he says.

She backs away and picks up the knife again, but then puts it back down. "I'm probably going to regret this," she says, "but I'm going to say it anyway. Peggy tells me you're self-conscious about your face. And she tells me that you shouldn't be. Not at all."

"I need to go."

"Oh, dammit. D, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."

He takes a deep breath. "No," he tells her. "You didn't. But I do need to go."

"Okay."

As he closes the door behind him, he hears her say, "Shit."

If anyone had come by the guard cabin during his absence, there had been no evidence of it when Francis had returned. The coffee pot still stood empty.

He is unable to sleep when he returns home—in part due to the continued shuddering of his thoughts in the wake left by Reba's kindness. He is unmoored by it.

In the bathroom once again, before he takes his bridge out, he swings the medicine cabinet door closed, steeling himself for the sight that greets him.

Peggy tells me you're self-conscious about your face. And she tells me that you shouldn't be.

Francis looks at his own reflection for a few moments. In what comes as almost a surprise to himself, he raises a fist and drives it into the mirror, which fragments, the stinging cracks opening fissures in his knuckles.

Not at all.

Leaving the glass on the bathroom floor, Francis goes to his bed, where the print in its cardboard tube still lays. He is half-reluctant to remove it but feels he needs to see it. The chemical smell of new paper is not off-putting enough to prevent his unrolling it and staring at the Dragon, the woman. Blood runs down his forearm and droplets patter onto the sheet, but by holding his hand just so, he avoids getting any of it on the paper.

When he sets it aside it rolls once again into a tight spiral.

With the blood tightening and drying on his skin, he picks up the Bible. The picture of Helen Jacobi flutters and lands face-down. She is too pale, anyway. Shining, not glowing like Reba. In his mind, Reba emerges from a blood-orange lily. He shakes his head and reads.

...and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

His cock stirs in his pants but he refuses to touch himself. Nor is he able to imagine Hannibal's hot mouth on him. He begins to ache, but still he ignores it.

"What have you read of Revelation, if I may ask?" Hannibal asks him as they sit across from one another in his office. Today it smells faintly of woodsmoke though there is no fireplace. Francis must assume the scent has followed him in from outdoors. It is cold, but not cold enough to snow. Not yet.

He watches Hannibal's lips. "I finished it."

"Hallucinatory, to say the least."

Francis nods.

"Did you recognize the parts that were reminiscent of your dreams?"

Another nod.

"Have you dreamed of more women?"

"Not dreamed."

Something flashes in Hannibal's eyes for a moment. Then it is gone, making Francis wonder if he even saw anything at all. "You returned to the deli."

"No. There's—" He hesitates. Reba is his secret, his prize. "A woman at work."

"One of your co-workers?"

"No. She visits the school. I gave her a ride home."

"Do you picture doing her harm?"

"I...try not to."

"Do you succeed?"

Francis says nothing.

"She is good, then. An archetype of virtue."

Something about Hannibal's assessment doesn't sit right with Francis. "She's real."

"John of Patmos, I suspect, had experience with few real women," Hannibal says. "It seems apparent from his characterization. They are either virtuous or profligate, and there exists no middle ground."

"The Woman Clothed with the Sun," Francis says.

"And the scarlet whore," Hannibal counters. "One extreme or the other. One or the other choice."

"God or the Devil," Francis says, tentative.

"Yes. Though I find all the 'falling on faces in worship' quite dull. Things are more interesting on Earth than in Heaven. The Son of Man with his wool-white hair and feet of brass. Quite encumbered."

"But the Dragon was trapped in the pit for a thousand years."

"Till the thousand years should be fulfilled," Hannibal quotes. "And after that he must be loosed a little season."

Levon is ebullient when Francis arrives at work the next day. The wind once again whips rain against the walls of the guards' station.

"Hey," says Levon, who is setting another pot of coffee to brew, "Did you hear the good news?"

Francis shakes his head even though Levon can't see him.

"Andy's off the machine. Breathing on his own now."

He cannot help but exhale sharply. Tendrils of gray mist swirl before his eyes.

Levon seems to take it for relief. "I know, right?" When he turns around, though, his brows furrow. "Jeez, man. You look awful. If you don't mind my saying. You sick?"

"Sick," Francis echoes, not caring about the butchered 's.'

The apparent inner debate flickers across Levon's face for a few long seconds, after which he finally says, "Why don't you go ahead and go home? I could use the overtime, anyway."

Terrified of stumbling and slamming his bulk into Levon or one of the furniture fixtures (the corner table), Francis reaches out to brace himself against the guard desk. When he trusts himself to nod without vertigo, he does so.

Levon's hand on his forearm startles him.

"Are you okay to drive?"

Francis nods again and at once heads out the door and into the lashing rain.

There are low lights visible at Hannibal's house. He doesn't know why he's driven here instead of the office, but he parks the van beside the curb—an eyesore in the neighborhood no doubt—and shambles toward the front door.

He is shivering, yet feels nothing but intense heat. When he has finally found shelter under the portico, Hannibal opens the door. He must have seen the van pull up.

"Please, Francis, come in."

Francis's soaked clothes drool rainwater onto the slate of the entryway. Unmindful of the mess, Hannibal places a hand at the small of his back and guides him into the lamplit interior of the house. Thunder eddies across the sky, rattling the windows.

Too stunned to process the situation, Francis does not process for a few moments that Hannibal has led him to the door of a dim bedroom.

"Wait here," Hannibal tells him.

He can do nothing but obey.

There is the faint sound of a door opening and closing again, then Hannibal returns and holds out a neatly folded pile of fabric. "I believe this will fit you. It's cut generously. Hand me your clothes when you're finished, please."

Francis takes the soft bundle; the garment nearly slipping through his hands like runnels of rainwater.

Hannibal pulls the door to.

Until it falls from his grip and he picks it up again, Francis is unable to tell that what he holds is a sort of robe. The sash trails on the ground at his feet. Indeed, the sleeves are cut very wide. He turns the kimono around. Winding over the broad swath of silk is the sinuous body of a serpent, embroidered in red.

Another thunderclap.

Though it is a little tight across the back, and seems very thin, the silk holds in the heat of his body. He thrusts the ball of soaked polyester toward Hannibal, whose expression is neutral—not appraising, not critical.

After Hannibal returns, drying his hands on a small hand towel, Francis follows him again to the sitting room. However, they pass through it and into a formal living area. When Hannibal clicks on the lamp, Francis is startled by an apparition that makes him flinch back. It is, of course, his own reflection in a floor-to-ceiling mirror—swathed in black and red—snarling. No, not snarling. Merely as he is.

He puts a hand over his mouth and looks away at the same time.

Hannibal's face may or may not be graced with an almost imperceptible smile. "I'll make you some tea," he says. "Sit down."

Francis seats himself on a scroll-top, carven-frame couch placed parallel to the huge mirror, only to nearly leap out of his seat again when the insistent strains of a string quartet roar to life from hidden speakers. The volume is immediately lowered.

"My apologies," says Hannibal when he returns with a silver tea service. "I often like to immerse myself in sound. It clears the mind."

Francis takes the teacup, and this time sips from the steaming liquid, relishing somewhat the rousing effect when he burns his palate.

"It suits you," says Hannibal.

Suddenly, Francis feels very exposed. He moves the silk to cover his thigh in an almost prim fashion.

"Has something happened?"

"Andy," he says, voice emerging raspy and broken-sounding.

"He's come out of the coma?" Hannibal asks, tilting his chin slightly.

Francis shakes his head. "Came off the breathing machine."

"Possibly signifying imminent recovery."

A nod. Francis sips at his tea, careful to place the lip of the cup as far away from the scar as he can.

"It is no doubt what his wife and family wish for," says Hannibal. "May I assume that you wish for the opposite?"

Francis bites the inside of his cheek. He exhales. "Yes."

"Perhaps you'll be lucky."

"I hate not knowing."

"Uncertainty dogs us all," Hannibal says, looking very much as though he is not someone plagued by doubt. "So much is in the hands of fortune, so much more is able to be influenced. Occasionally the paths cross."

I'm afraid, Francis wants to say.

"When were you born, Francis?"

It is an abrupt redirection, but Francis holds onto it. "Nineteen seventy-nine. July."

"What coincidence," says Hannibal. "Did you know there was a total eclipse of the sun in February of that year? Visible from nearly all of North America. They say that children born of mothers who walk outside during a solar eclipse will have the cleft lip."

Francis cannot look at Hannibal's face.

"Modern surgical techniques are wonderful. They certainly have progressed since I practiced."

"You were a surgeon?"

"Before I chose psychiatry, yes."

Unbidden, the image of the woman at the deli appears before him. Like the Dragon in his dream, though, he waits—knife in hand—for permission from Hannibal. The thought surprises him into looking up.

Now Hannibal's smile is fuller. "How does that make you feel?"

"I don't know," Francis says.

"I'd like to try a little experiment," Hannibal tells him. "Only if you're willing."

Memories of the night of the dinner here rush back, and Francis feels a clench of desire deep in his gut. But Hannibal does not touch him.

"Come with me," he says instead.

Reluctant, Francis follows him to the mirror. He cannot help but turn his head when he sees his own face.

"I'd like you to look, please."

Francis clenches his fists at his side, but he does as he is bid.

"What do you see?" asks Hannibal.

"Nothing. Nothing."

"Look beyond what is in the mirror. To the place you were before. When I told you I practiced surgery."

That he had such sheer incisive perception shocks Francis and he turns his head toward Hannibal, who says, "Look ahead, please. Always ahead, dear pilgrim."

When he looks back, Francis watches his reflection blur and waver as if captured by one of the poorly functioning cameras on the University of Baltimore campus.

"What do you see?"

"A woman."

"The woman you drove home."

"No." The denial is emphatic. "Blonde."

"The woman from the deli."

The Woman Clothed in Sun. "Andy's wife."

Hannibal does not question it. "What is she doing?"

"Crying."

"Do you want to help her?"

He pauses. "No."

"Do you want her?"

"No. Yes."

"Do you want to hurt her?"

Francis feels cool air on his skin. He had not realized he was growing hard until his erection had parted the folds of the robe. "Yes."

Hannibal pulls at the sash and the robe falls open, whispering over Francis's flesh. "Tell me."

The breath is stuck in Francis's throat. "I—"

"Don't be afraid."

He bites back the sting of tears. "Her face. Her body. She's blushing. The blood...filling her skin."

"Are you touching her?"

In his mind, Francis's arm is red, covered in scales, the insistent shade shaming even Helen Jacobi's terrified, aroused flush. His fingers are tipped with sharp black claws. Deep, blood-gorged canals open in her flesh as he draws his hand down her body. "Yes."

"What is she doing?"

Francis squeezes his eyes shut, but remembers Hannibal's command and opens them again. "Bleeding," he whispers. Hannibal's fingers are soft at his neck, pulling the fabric away. The silk puddles on the floor.

"How do you feel?" Hannibal asks, his lips very close to the skin of Francis's shoulder.

Instead of answering, he says, "Touch me?"

"I want you to touch yourself."

There is a great rush of familiar relief as Francis wraps his hand around his cock. He can no longer see his own reflection, only the spreading pool of gore enrobing the shining figure of Helen Jacobi. Her eyes are beacon-bright.

"Good," says Hannibal.

His hand is sweaty as he strokes himself—faster now. He is too enraptured even to gasp when he feels clever fingers between his buttocks, stroking. Hannibal is a warm presence behind him, a wall of sensation rife with the scratch of wool, the soft scrape of cotton, embroidered silk. A hand on his hip.

"Faster," Hannibal instructs.

Francis groans. It hurts somewhat, but he can't stop. Won't stop.

Hannibal kisses his sweat-sheened skin. "You are beautiful."

Francis cannot register the shock, the disconnect of the sentiment with what he suddenly sees reflected before him because he is coming.

"Very good," says Hannibal.

Reeling in his euphoria, Francis feels the slight press of small, white teeth against his flesh.