Lecter seemed to come back to himself, perhaps roused by the sound of Starling's gasp. Whether it was from revulsion, shock, or both he could not say.

He did say "If only I could, I would feed from you for a thousand years. Use your good clean blood to mark the doorpost of my past." Use it to bind the shattered pieces of the teacup, if I could.

Good clean blood, eh? Did you not just feed me brains? What is your definition of good? Though Starling had found them quite delicious. Caper berries... must have more caper berries. Food for thought.

"Passover. God, Dr. Lecter?" Starling was startled at the clarity of her voice.

"My belief is inconsequential, don't you think? What influence does my belief or lack thereof exert upon the universe? Reality, Clarice, is what does not go away when one ceases to believe in it."

He carefully reached up and fastened her gown around her, mindful and deliberate not to let his skin come in contact with hers. Gracefully, he settled back into a kneel.

"Or what doesn't come back, even when one cannot cease to believe in it." she spoke this thought aloud and waited, waited, waited an impossible stretch of time while what she had believed in seemed to flash before her mind's fantastically opened eye. Vaporous dissipating syllables, the color of sulphur. Then the maroon of the inside of her eyelids. Silence.

Lecter looked up at her from his kneeling position, his visage taking on a primal, lively countenance from the flicker of the fire. His tongue explored the familiar grooves of his palate and was surprised by a spontaneous desire to know if the terrain of Starling's mouth would feel the same under his tongue. Lecter kept his kneeling position, held fast by the truism she spoke, and by a strange and wicked shiver from his temple to where the flesh of his knee met with the burled wood of the floor. Something caught his eye, a brief bounce of yellow flame on porcelain, and he turned his head to look at it. A shard of broken teacup. Broken is all it would ever be, for all time.

Starling, are you worth the trade of my agony and exquisite pain? Lecter bares his smile at this, his teeth white against the dark red background of his mouth.

"Tell me Clarice, do you know what else the Bible requires on the night of Passover? Do you know what becomes of the lamb, Clarice?" Each syllable of her name, enunciated, as if he enjoyed rolling it on his tongue before letting it free.

Starling knew, oh how she knew, "It is required that it be... eaten."

Lecter beamed with his wolfish maw and leapt at her. Both their cries, his of realization and triumph, Starling's of mortal fear, were drowned out by the explosion of the deep hidden heart of one of the logs, finally found by the fire.

To be continued.....