The Corinthian wants someone to teach him "how to kill" and finds himself frustrated with Charles's inability to do violence even in self-defense. He eventually develops a rapport with Charles's traveling companion, a wealthy, traveling heiress who is degenerate and possibly insane. The woman claims that she cannot die, that she is the living incarnation of Pestilence, and refers to herself (and asks others to refer to her) by a new name each day, changing identities as she travels about. After she fatally shoots the Corinthian, and he survives by possessing the body of her young Italian lover, Amedeo, the woman recognizes the Corinthian as something other than human who can "become someone else." The two form a pact in which the woman agrees to teach the Corinthian how to murder, and the Corinthian agrees to teach her how to "stop being you."
