Blood Canticle (6 page)

I didn’t know. I wanted to be a saint! I was frightened. I felt emptiness. What was the nature of her monster child? I didn’t want to know. Yes, I did.

And then I fixed my eyes on her. I thought of Quinn. And there flared for me in dim luminescence a scheme of meaning.

“We do have myths,” I said. “We had a goddess. But now is not the time for all those things. You needn’t believe all I’ve seen. What I do have to give you is a vision. I think a vision is stronger than an illusion. And the vision is that we can exist as powerful beings without hurting anyone who’s good and kind.”

“Slay the Evil Doer,” she said with inevitable innocence.

“Amen,” I said. “Slay the Evil Doer. And then we do possess the world, the world you wanted when you were a crazed kid, daydreaming on your long restless walks all over New Orleans, your professed Wander Slut days, the little Sacred Heart Academy girl seducing all of her cousins, I know you, and thriving at home on junk food and the computer, yeah, I saw it, your drunken parents safely out of your hair, their names already inscribed in the Book of Death, all that before anything broke your heart.”

“Whoa!” She gave me back a soft laugh. “So vampires can say all those words without taking a breath. You got it. And you just told me not to look back. You like to give orders.”

“So we ransacked each other’s souls during the Dark Trick, that’s what’s supposed to happen,” I said. “I wish I could eat your little mind now. You’ve got me puzzled. Dreaming dreams. I’m forgetting things, like, for instance, that those I make in the Blood usually wind up despising me or leaving me for simpler reasons.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” she said. Then came the pucker of her red eyebrows again, tiny distinct wrinkles in the smooth flesh that vanished instantly. “I’m thirsting,” she said. “Am I supposed to thirst? I can see blood. I can smell it. I want it.”

I sighed. I wanted to give her mine. But it wasn’t the right way to go about things. She needed her appetite for the hunt. I was flustered suddenly.

Even Quinn, with all the adolescent mortal lust boiling in his brain, was handling her rebirth better than I was. Let’s get a grip.

I withdrew from the flower-strewn bower. Woke up to the room. And Quinn standing there, patient, with so much confidence in me that he kept his jealousy in check. I sparked off his blue eyes.

She ruffled the flowers on the bed into ruin and mumbled poetry again.

I took her hand and brought her up off the bed and onto her feet. She shook all the petals out of her hair. I tried not to look at her. She was as ripe and glowing as any dream-world sacrificial virgin. She sighed and looked at all the scattered clothes.

Quinn gathered them up, swooping down, circling her carefully as if he didn’t dare to touch her.

She looked at me. No flaw remained. All the bruises of those needles, they were gone as I knew they would be. But I must confess (to you) that I’d been a little unsure. She’d been so weak, so worked over, so torn. But the cells had been there, hiding, waiting for the renewal. And the Blood had found them out and re-created her.

Her lips were trembling a little and she said in a half whisper,

“How long do you think before I can go to Rowan? I don’t want to fake my death, tell them lies, all that, disappear leaving a space where I was. I—. There are things I want to know from them. My child, you know, she went away. We lost her. But maybe now . . .” She was looking around at the most common objects, the bedpost, the edge of the velvet spread, the carpet under her naked toes. She flexed her toes. “Maybe now. . . .”

“You don’t have to die,” I said. “Isn’t Quinn the clear proof of that? Quinn’s been living here at Blackwood Farm for a year. Things are in limbo for you. Later on tonight you can call Rowan. Tell her you’re all right, that the nurse is here . . .”

“Yes . . .”

“She’s a sweet and loving nurse whom I can dazzle like that, I’ve done it, I know, and they’ll feed her Creole chicken and rice in the kitchen. You’re blinding me, Beautiful. Put on your clothes.”

“Right-O, Boss,” she whispered.

A smile flitted across her face, but I could tell her mind was giving her no peace. One minute she was looking at the flowers as though they were out to attack her and the next she was plunged into thought.

“But what about the people left in this house?” she asked. “They all saw me when I came in. I know what I looked like. We tell them it’s a miracle?”

I burst out laughing.

“Is there a raincoat in your closet, Quinn?”

“I can think of something fancier than that,” he replied.

“Cool. And you can carry her down the steps? I already told Clem we’d be going into New Orleans.”

“Right-O, Boss,” she said again, with a faint smile. “What are we going to do in New Orleans?”

“Hunt,” I said. “Hunt and drink from the Evil Doer. You use your telepathic power to seek them out. But I’m going to assist you. I’m going to lead you to the kill. I’m going to be there with you.”

She nodded. “I’m positively parched,” she said. Then her eyes went wide. Her tongue had just touched her tiny fang teeth. “Good God,” she whispered.

“He’s in Heaven,” I said softly. “Don’t let Him hear you.”

She took the panties from Quinn and slipped them on, pulling them up over her little nest of red pubic hair. That was ten times worse than pure nakedness. The lace slip with its delicate straps came over her head, a bit long for her because she wasn’t as tall as Aunt Queen had been, but otherwise it was fine, snug over her breasts and hips, the broad lace hem just above her ankles.

Quinn took out his pocket handkerchief and wiped the caked blood off her cheeks. He kissed her, and she fell to kissing him, and for a moment they were just lost to each other, kissing and kissing, like two long graceful cats licking at each other.

He picked her up off her feet and wouldn’t stop kissing her. They were both of them purring. He wanted so badly to drink just a taste of her blood.

I slumped down in the chair at Quinn’s desk.

I listened to the house. Clatter of dishes in the sink, Jasmine talking. Cyndy, the Nurse, was there crying at the sight of Aunt Queen’s room; and where was Quinn’s mother, Patsy? Clem out front waiting for us with that big car, yes, right, don’t frighten her by carrying her through the air; take the car.

In a daze of small considerations, I watched her slip on the silk dress. The silk dress appeared handmade with embroidered cuffs and a tight embroidered collar that Quinn clasped at the back of her neck. It hung to her ankles. It looked divine on her—like a gown rather than a dress. She was a barefoot princess. Oh yeah, that’s a cliché, well then, so is a fulsome and comely young woman. Shove it.

She put on a pair of slightly scuffed little white slippers, the kind you can buy in any drugstore, the ones she’d obviously worn over here, and after she put her head back and tossed her hair, she was almost complete. It was vampire hair now, and it needed no real brushing, each strand fighting with the strand next to it, the whole voluminous and gleaming, her forehead high and well proportioned, with eyebrows divinely set, and then she flashed on me. I’m still here, guys.

“It’s tricky,” she said gently, as if she didn’t want to be rude to me. “He knows you have a cameo in your pocket, and so I know because I can read his thoughts.”

“Oh, so that’s what I’ve done here,” I said, laughing under my breath. “I forgot about the cameo.” I gave it to Quinn. I could foresee this triangular telepathy being something of a nightmare.

Yes, I’d wanted them free to read each other’s thoughts, so why the Hell was I jealous?

Towering over her, he pinned the cameo carefully in the center of the embroidered white collar. It looked old and fine.

Then in an anxious whisper he put a question to her.

“You wouldn’t wear Aunt Queen’s high-heel shoes, would you?”

She went into a riot of soft laughter. So did I.

Till her dying day, Aunt Queen had apparently gone about in breakneck high heels with ankle straps and open toes, some covered in rhinestones or, for all I knew, real diamonds. She’d had on such wondrous shoes when I made her acquaintance.

One of the enduring ironies of her death was that she had been in her bare stocking feet when she suffered the fall that killed her. But that was the evildoing of Goblin, who had deliberately startled her and even pushed her.

So the shoes were innocent and there were probably piles of them in her closets downstairs.

But slap together the image of Mona, the tramp kid, in saddle oxfords, and any vision of Aunt Queen’s heels, and it was uproariously funny. Why would Mona do such a thing as that to herself? And if you knew how much Quinn noticed women’s high heels—namely Jasmine’s and Aunt Queen’s, it was twice as uproariously funny.

Mona was stuck someplace between vampire trance and total love, gazing into Quinn’s earnest face trying to figure this.

“All right, Quinn, I’ll try her shoes,” she said, “if you want me to.” Now that was pure transnatural female.

He was on the phone to Jasmine in an instant. Bring upstairs Aunt Queen’s finest big white satin wrapper—one of the full-length articles with the ostrich feather trim, and a pair of her new heels, very glittery, and hurry.

It didn’t require a vampire’s hearing to pick up Jasmine’s answer:

“Lawd! You’re going to make that sick girl put on those things? Have you lost your mind, Little Boss! I’m coming up there! And Cyndy, the Nurse, is here and she is as shocked as I am, and she’s coming with me, and you better leave that child alone. Lawd! I mean Lawd! You can’t go undressing her like a doll, Taw-quin Blackwood, you lunatic! Is that child dead already? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Answer me, Taw-quin Blackwood, this is Jasmine talking to you! Do you even know that Patsy’s run off and left all her medicines, and nobody knows where the Hell she’s gone? Now, I don’t blame you for not caring about Patsy but somebody’s got to think of Patsy, and Cyndy’s crying her eyes out down here over Patsy—.”

“Jasmine, calm down,” Quinn said. He went on in the most courteous and calm manner. “Patsy’s dead. I killed her night before last. I broke her neck and dumped her in the swamp and the alligators ate her. You don’t have to worry about Patsy anymore. Throw her medicines in the trash. Tell Cyndy, the Nurse, to have some supper. I’m coming down for Aunt Queen’s shoes and negligee myself. Mona is completely better.” He put down the phone and went straight out the door. “Latch this after me.”

I obliged.

Mona looked at me searchingly.

“He was telling the truth about Patsy, wasn’t he?” she asked. “And Patsy’s his
mother
???”

I nodded. I shrugged.

“They’ll never believe him,” I said, “and it was the smartest thing for him to do. He can repeat that confession until doomsday. But when you know more about Patsy, you’ll understand.”

She looked horrified, and the Blood was intensifying it.

“Which was the smartest thing?” she asked. “Killing Patsy or telling them that?”

“Telling them is what I meant,” I pursued. “Killing her only Quinn can explain. Patsy hated Quinn, I can attest to that, and she was a hard merciless woman. She was dying of AIDS. She didn’t have much time on the mortal clock. The rest he can answer.”

Mona was aghast, a virgin vampire about to faint from moral shock.

“In all the years I’ve known him, he has never mentioned Patsy to me or even answered by E-mail one single solitary question about his mother.”

I shrugged again. “He has his secrets as you have. I know the name of your child. Morrigan. But he doesn’t.”

She flinched.

There was the pounding sound of argument rising through the floor below. Even Nash and Tommy, fresh from the supper table, had been pressed into the cause on Jasmine’s side, and Big Ramona declared Quinn a necromaniac. Cyndy the Nurse was sobbing.

“But still,” said Mona, “to kill your own mother.”

For one brief technicolor second, I let myself think of my own mother, Gabrielle, whom I had brought into the Blood. Where in the wide world was she—that cold silent unmovable creature whose solitude was unimaginable to me? It hadn’t been so very long ago that I’d seen her. I’d see her again, some time or other. There was no warmth, no solace, no understanding there. But what did it matter?

Quinn rapped on the door. I let him in. I could hear the engine of the limousine started outside. Clem was getting ready for us. The night was hot. He was running the cooling. It would be sweet driving into New Orleans.

Quinn leaned back against the door when it was shut and bolted, and took a deep breath. “It would have been easier,” he said, “to rob the Bank of England.”

He thrust the glittering high-heel slippers into Mona’s waiting hands.

She looked them over.

She slipped them on her feet, gaining a good four inches in height and a tension in her legs that even through the dress appeared ruthlessly seductive. The shoes were just a tiny bit too short, but it was hardly noticeable, the rhinestone-studded strap cutting across her toes exquisitely. He buckled one ankle strap as she did the other.

She took the long white negligee from Quinn and put it on, wrapping it about her and laughing as the shivering feathers tickled her. It was loose and shimmering and gaudy and glorious.

She ran all about the room in little and big circles. One of those things guys can’t do????? Her balance was perfect. Just the beginning of her strength, and so some sense of frivolity inside of her wanted these impossible torturous slippers. Round and around, and then she froze against the far window:

“Why on earth did you kill your mother?” she asked.

Quinn stared at her. He seemed at a total loss. He went towards her in a great fluid gesture. He took her in his arms and pressed her to him as he’d done before and said nothing. Momentary fear. The mention of Patsy had enveloped him in darkness. Or maybe it was Aunt Queen’s finery.

There came a loud rapping at the door. Jasmine’s voice followed:

“You open up, Little Boss, and let me see that child, or I swear to God I’ll get the sheriff.”