Blood Canticle (18 page)

“I never made it home. They found me comatose in a roadside park, bleeding from an apparent miscarriage. No one dreamed I’d given birth to Emaleth, and she, poor orphan, unable to rouse me or draw more milk from me, had started her long trek to New Orleans on foot.

“I was rushed home. In the hospital they had to remove my organs to stop the hemorrhaging. It probably saved me from the wasting sickness that later almost destroyed Mona. But my brain had been severely damaged. I remained in a deep coma.

“I was unconscious upstairs when Lasher, dressed as a priest, slipped past the guards and into this house, and appealed to the Talamasca and to Michael to let him live. After all, was he not a priceless specimen? He counted on the Talamasca to save him. He poured out a tale of his former life. It’s a fascinating study of the innocence of the Taltos. But Lasher wasn’t innocent. Lasher had brought death. Michael fought him and killed him. And so his long rule of the Mayfair family came to an end. I was still comatose when Emaleth came and bent to give me her healing milk.

“When I woke and saw the Taltos daughter I had birthed, and realized I was drinking from her breast, I was horrified. This gangly creature with a baby face terrified me. It was a moment of dislocated lucidity. And here I was nursing from the creature as if I were a helpless baby. I grabbed the bedside gun. I killed her. I did that. I destroyed her. That quick and she was no more.”

She shook her head. She looked away as we do when we sink into the past. Guilt, loss . . . her pain seemed beyond these words.

“It didn’t have to happen,” she murmured. “What had she done but make her way to the house as I had taught her? What had she done but brought me back to consciousness with her plentiful milk? One lone female Taltos. How could she hurt me? It was the loathing of Lasher that warped my mind. It was the revulsion at this alien species and my own atavistic behavior.

“And so she died, my girl. And there were two graves beneath this oak. And I, risen from the coma, a monster now myself, buried her.” She sighed. “My lost girl,” she said. “I had betrayed her.”

Quiet. Even the garden was hushed. The low roar of a passing car seemed as natural as a breeze stirring the trees.

I was suspended in Rowan’s sadness.

Stirling’s eyes were moist and aglow in the shadows as he studied Rowan. Michael said not a word.

Then Mona spoke very gently.

“There was trouble in the Talamasca,” she said. “It all had to do with the Taltos. Some members had tried to get control of Lasher. They’d even done murder. Michael and Rowan took off for Europe to try to investigate the corruption inside the Order. They felt a familial tie with the Talamasca. We all did. And during that time, I realized I was pregnant. My child began to grow out of control. It began to speak to me. It told me its name was Morrigan.” Her voice broke. “I was enchanted, crazed.”

“I went south to Fontevrault plantation house where Dolly Jean was living, and she and Mary Jane Mayfair, my cousin, my friend who later ran away, she and Dolly Jean, they helped me to give birth to Morrigan. It was really, really painful. And beyond scary. But Morrigan was tall and beautiful. No one could look at Morrigan and not say she was beautiful. She was shining and fresh and magical.”

Dolly Jean gave a little cackle in her half sleep. “She knew a whole jumble of human things,” she said. “Just a real beastie!”

“You loved her at the time,” said Mona, “you know you did.”

“I’m not saying I didn’t,” said Dolly Jean, squinting at Mona, “but what do you make of somebody who tells you she’s going to take over the whole family and make it a clan of Walking Babies? Was I supposed to be tickled at that?”

“She was just born!” said Mona softly. “She didn’t know what she meant. She had my ambition, my dreams.”

“I don’t know where she is,” said Rowan in her deep heartfelt voice. “I don’t know whether she’s alive or dead.”

Mona was deeply miserable, but I had so shamed her over her tears that she held them back painfully. I tried to take her hand. She drew away.

“But you knew the Taltos who came and took her!” Mona said to Rowan. “You had met him in Europe. He had heard the story of you and Lasher in your wanderings.” She turned to me. “That’s what happened. He had found them. Yes, another one, an ancient survivor. He was their friend. Of course, they didn’t tell me and they didn’t tell Morrigan. Oh no, we were children! They kept it to themselves! Imagine. An ancient one. Hadn’t I suffered enough to be told about him? And when he came here, they let him take my daughter away.”

“How could I have stopped them?” asked Rowan. “You were with us,” she said to Mona. “Morrigan was maddened by the scent of the male on our clothes, on the gifts we’d received from him. And why he came, we’ll never know. All we know is what you know. He was out in the garden. She went to the window. She ran out to him. There was no stopping either of them. We never saw them again.”

“Mona, we searched for him by every conceivable means,” said Michael. “Surely you must believe us.”

“I want the files,” said Mona, “the paperwork. His name, the names of his companies in New York. He was a rich man, a powerful man, this ancient wise one. You admitted that much.”

“I’ll be glad to give it to you,” said Rowan, “but please understand, he liquidated everything. He vanished.”

“If only you’d searched right away,” Mona said bitterly.

“Mona, you agreed with us at the time,” said Rowan. “We would wait until they contacted us. We respected their choice to be together. We didn’t think they would simply disappear. We couldn’t imagine it.”

“We were afraid of hearing from them,” said Michael. “We had no idea how they could multiply or survive in the modern world, how Ash could control them.”

“Ash was the name of the man,” I said.

“Yes,” said Michael. His pain opened up as he spoke. “Ash Templeton. Ash
was
ancient. He had been alone for so long it was unimaginable. He’d seen his species become extinct. He was the one who told us the history of the Taltos. He believed that the Taltos couldn’t survive in the world of humans. After all, he’d seen them wiped out. His was a tragic history. Of course, as we listened to his stories we had no idea that Morrigan even existed. We left Ash in New York. We loved him. We pledged eternal friendship. Then we got home and discovered Morrigan.”

“Maybe it was some telepathic sense that guided him to Morrigan,” I said.

“We don’t know,” said Rowan. “But he came here, he entered the side garden, he saw her through the windows, and she picked up his scent and she ran to him.”

“For years we were afraid,” said Michael. “We combed the news services for any story that might involve the Taltos. We were on the alert and so was the Talamasca. Mona, you must think back to the time before you were so sick. You must remember. We were afraid because we knew that the species might do great harm to human beings.”

“Well put!” said Dolly Jean. “And Morrigan all fired up to rule the world, preaching that her vision came from her human father and mother. When she wasn’t looking back she was looking ahead, or dancing in circles or sniffing at scents, she was a wild beastie.”

“Oh hush up, Dolly Jean, please,” whispered Mona, biting her lower lip, “you know you loved her. And all of you—I wanted to look for them long before you did. For years you wouldn’t tell me that name. Oh, just leave it in your hands. Leave it in the hands of Mayfair and Mayfair. And now you say it as if it’s nothing. Ash Templeton. Ash Templeton.” She started to cry.

“That’s not true,” said Michael. “I acknowledged this creature as my daughter. You know I did. We began to search before we told you about it. We didn’t know how sick you would get.” His voice was raw, but he swallowed and moistened his dried lips with his tongue, and then he continued: “We didn’t know yet how badly you would need the Taltos milk. We only learned that in time. But we tried to contact Ash, and we discovered that he had sold all his holdings. He’d vanished from the banks, the stock exchanges, the world markets.”

“Whatever his feelings for us,” Rowan said, “he chose to disappear. He chose to keep his future secret.”

Mona was sobbing against Quinn. It broke Michael’s heart to see it.

Stirling spoke up, his voice assuming a reverent authority:

“Mona,” he said, “the Talamasca began to search for Ash and Morrigan almost immediately. We tried to do it in an unobtrusive way. But we searched. We found some evidence that they had visited Donnelaith. But after that, the trail went cold. And please believe me now when I tell you again: we’ve never found the slightest trace of them anywhere.”

“That’s actually quite surprising,” I said.

“I’m not speaking to you,” cried Mona, glaring at me and then drawing close to Quinn as if she was afraid of me.

“Some evidence of them should have turned up,” I said, “no matter what happened to them.”

“That’s what I’ve always thought,” said Michael. “For two, three years we lived in dread of their surfacing in some catastrophic way. I can’t tell you all my fears. I thought: what if the young ones bred out of control? What if they rose up against Ash? What if they committed murders? And then when we stopped living in fear and started to search, nothing.”

Dolly Jean chuckled again, bringing up her shoulders and letting her head sink down and rocking back and forth. “Walking Babies can kill humans easy as humans can kill Walking Babies. They could be breeding somewhere, breeding like fire, spreading in all directions, hiding in the valleys and the hills, in the mountains and on the plains, traveling over land and sea, and then comes the ringing of a loud bell, and they all walk out all over the world at the same time and they shoot one human being apiece, bang, and they take over the entire planet!”

“Save that for Tante Oscar,” said Rowan under her breath with a cool lift of her eyebrows.

(I winked at Dolly Jean. She nodded and wagged her finger.)

Michael looked directly at Mona and leaned in towards her as he addressed her.

“I hope we’ve given you what you need,” he said. “As for the files, I’ll see that they’re all copied and delivered to you wherever you like. They’ll prove our efforts to track down every lead. We’ll give you every scrap of paper we have on Ash Templeton.”

“Of course,” said Dolly Jean, “they could both be stone-cold dead in the grave like Romeo and Juliet! Two Walking Babies all wrapped up in each other’s arms, just rotting away somewhere to cartilage. Like maybe he couldn’t stand her ranting and raving and all her plans, and he tied a silk stocking around her neck and—.”

“Stop it, Dolly Jean!” cried Mona. “Don’t you say another word or I’ll scream!”

“You’re screaming now, be still!” whispered Quinn.

In my heart of hearts I entered into a debate with myself, and then I spoke:

“I’ll find them,” I said quietly.

I startled everyone.

Mona turned to me resentfully. “Just what do you mean by that!” she demanded. Her handkerchief was full of blood tears.

I looked at her as disdainfully as I could, considering how tender and pretty she was, and how wicked and fiendish I was, and then I looked across the table at Rowan.

“I want to thank you all for sharing your secrets with us,” I said. I looked at Michael. “You’ve trusted us, and treated us as if we were sinless and kind, and I don’t know that we are. But I know that we try to be.”

A slow broad smile lit up Rowan’s face, extraordinary to behold. “Sinless and kind,” she repeated. “How marvelous are those words. If only I could work them into a hymn and sing it under my breath day and night, day and night. . . .”

We looked at each other.

“Give me a little time. If they still exist, if they’ve parented a colony, if they’re anywhere in the wide world, I know those who will know where they are—without question.”

Rowan raised her eyebrows and looked off thoughtfully, and the smile came again—a lamp of loveliness. She nodded.

Michael seemed vaguely stimulated by my words, and Stirling was curious and respectful.

“Sure enough,” said Dolly Jean, without opening her eyes, “you didn’t think he was the oldest Blood Child in the world, did you? And you mark my words,” she said to me, “you big old great thing, you sure are pretty as an angel, and you’ve got plenty charm enough to be a gangster. I’ve seen every gangster movie ever made three times and I know what I’m talking about. They put a little boot black on your hair, you could play Bugsy Siegel.”

“Thank you,” I replied soberly. “It was always my ambition to play Sam Spade, actually. I was all alone and forlorn when the
Black Mask
magazine first published
The Maltese Falcon.
I read the novel by the light of the moon. Sam Spade captured my ambition.”

“Well, no wonder you talk like a gangster,” said Dolly Jean. “But Sam Spade’s small time. Go for Bugsy Siegel or Lucky Luciano.”

“Stop this!” screamed Mona. “Don’t you realize what he’s just said?” She was painfully confused, trying to crush her sobs, trying to crush her rage against me. “You can really do this?” she asked in a little bewildered voice. “You can find Ash and Morrigan?”

I didn’t answer. Let her suffer for a night.

I rose from the table. I bent to kiss Rowan on the cheek. My hand found hers and held it tight for a small, heated moment.
A precious garden closed against me, is my sister, my beloved bride.
Her fingers caught mine and held them with all her strength.

The gentlemen had risen to see me off. I murmured my superficial farewells, and only then did the secret grip release me.

I walked slowly into the formal garden beyond the pool, and would have gone up into the roaring clouds, to be as far away from the Earth as I could be. But Mona’s piteous cry rang behind me.

“Lestat, don’t leave me!”

Across the lawn she came running, her silk dress billowing.

“Oh, you miserable girl!” I said, deliberately gnashing my teeth. I received her in my embrace, sweet bundle of panting limbs. “You intolerable witch. You wicked undisciplined Blood Child. You contemptible pupil. You worsling, you rebellious and obstinate fledgling.”