FIFTEEN
Spring, 1914
Hannibal surfaced only slowly. His mind was pleasantly blank, his body paralysed by pleasure unlike any he had ever known. As the drowsy, narcotic fog began to clear, he could only regret his growing awareness. He could have stayed in that slow, wonderful trance forever. Better still to go even deeper, and let bliss carry him into darkness.
But he found himself emerging, not sinking.
‘Sir.’
Something touched his face, and he struggled to focus his eyes.
‘Sir.’
There was a thin film between him and reality, a comforting numbness he would have preferred to preserve. But it popped like a bubble, and he looked up into the boy’s enormous eyes. Brown. Earnest. Confused and deeply horrified.
‘I’m not dead,’ Hannibal observed. With the numbness gone, he felt intensely
