Blood Canticle Read online

  "Very well, honey bunch, let me hear it. I'm the Maker. Let it go."

  "I knew that for so long, that I ought to die. God, when I think of it, it's the only thing I really know right now! I was supposed to die." Her words flowed calmly. "People around me got so used to it, they slipped up. They'd say, 'You used to be so beautiful, we'll never forget that.' Dying, that had become the central obligation of my life. I used to lie there and try to figure how to make it easier for people. I mean they were so miserable. This went on slowly for years-."

  "Keep talking," I said. I loved her easy trust, her immediate openness.

  "There was a period of time where I could still enjoy music and chocolate, you know, special things, like bed jackets with lace too. And I could dream of my child, my lost child. Then I couldn't really eat anything anymore. And the music only made me jittery. I kept seeing people who weren't really there. I thought Maybe I never had that child. Morrigan, gone so fast. But then I wouldn't have been dying if I hadn't had Morrigan. I saw ghosts. . . ."

  "Oncle Julien?" I asked.

  She hesitated, then: "No. Oncle Julien only came to me way, way back, when he wanted me to do something, and it was always in a dream. Oncle Julien is in the Light. He doesn't come to the Earth unless there's a really important reason."

  (Deep carefully concealed shudder.)

  She went on, the vampiric musicality sharpening her soft words: "These ghosts I saw were just really dead people like my father and my mother who were waiting for me-you know, the ones who come to take you across-but they wouldn't speak to me. It wasn't time yet, that's what Fr. Kevin said. Fr. Kevin's a powerful witch. He never knew until he came home South. He goes into St. Mary's Assumption Church in the night when it's completely dark except for the candles, you know, and he lies down on the marble, full-length, you know-."

  (Secret heartache. I know. )

  "-and with his arms outstretched, he contemplates Christ on the Cross. He imagines himself kissing the bloody wounds of Christ."

  "And you in your pain? Did you pray?"

  "Not very much," she said. "It was like prayer would have required a certain coherence. This last year, I was incapable of that coherence."

  "Ah, yes, I see," I said. "Go on."

  "And things happened," she said. "People wanted me to die. Something happened. Someone . . . People

  wanted me to get it over with. . . ." "Did you want to get it over with?"

  She didn't answer right away, then she said, "I wanted to escape. But when someone . . . someone. . . . My

  thoughts became-"

  "-became what?"

  "Became trivial."

  "No, not so," I insisted.

  "How to get out of the room, how to get all the way down the steps, how to scoot behind the wheel of the

  limo, how to get the flowers, how to get to Quinn-."

  "I see. Poetic. Specific. Not trivial."

  "A destination with the sanction of poetry, perhaps," she said. " 'There with fantastic garlands did she

  come.' And so I did."

  "Most certainly," I said. "But before you could do it-you were going to say something, you were about to

  say something about someone. . . ." Silence.

  "Then Rowan came," she said. "You don't know my cousin Rowan."

  (I don't?)

  Flash of pain in her clear brilliant eyes.

  "Yeah, well, Rowan came," she said. "Rowan has this power. . . ." "Was it for your sake or her sake that she was going to kill you?"

  She smiled. "I don't know. I don't think she knew, either."

  "But she realized you knew and she didn't use her power."

  "I told her, I said, 'Rowan, you're scaring me! Stop it, you're scaring me!' And she burst into tears. Or was

  it me? I think I burst into tears! It was one of us. I was so scared."

  "And so you escaped."

  "Yes, I did, indeed I did."

  " 'Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes.' "

  She smiled again. Would she talk about the Woman Child? She lay very still.

  I could feel Quinn's anxiety, and the outpouring of his love.

  All the while, he hadn't moved the hand that lay on her shoulder.

  "I'm not dying," she said with a shrug. "I'm here."

  "No, you're not," I said, "that's finished."

  "I've got to reach back and remember when I wanted things."

  "No, you don't," I said. "That's mortal talk. You're Mona-Born to Darkness now." I tried to take it slowly,

  watching her smile come and go. Faint freckles on her face. The inevitable glister of her skin.

  "That's it," I said. "Let your eyes drink me in. You're seeing colors you never saw before. You're realizing

  sensations you never even dreamt about. The Dark Blood's a magnificent teacher. You shiver because

  you think the pain's going to come back, but you couldn't go back to that pain if you wanted to. Stop

  shivering. I mean it. Stop."

  "What are you asking of me?" she said, "that I surrender to you or to the Blood?"

  I laughed under my breath. "I don't know why women always surprise me," I said. "Men don't. I think I

  underestimate women in general. They distract me. Their loveliness always strikes me as alien."

  She laughed outright. "What do you mean, alien?"

  "You're the Great Unknown, Sweetheart."

  "Elaborate," she said.

  "Well, think about Adam in the Bible, I mean this guy is the Wimp of All Time saying to Almighty God, the Creator, Yahweh Who made the stars, 'The woman gave me to eat!' I mean the poor slob is just a spineless hopeless jerk! And this is Original Sin, no less! The Primal Catastrophe. Oh, I mean-pa-lease. BUT! When you see a magnificent woman-like you-with your green eyes just the perfect distance apart, tinsel voice giving out intelligent words, lying naked and staring with an expression of keen unerring comprehension, you can sort of read into Adam an inevitable bafflement in the face of Eve, something that defies clarification, and that's how Adam could come up with such a ludicrous excuse! 'This completely weird, way out, strange, mysterious inscrutable seductive being which you made out of my rib, gave me to eat.' Get it?"

  Quinn gave me a little laugh against his will. He was seething with possessiveness. Me and her on the bed. But this was nice, his laughter.

  I locked in on her again. Enough about the Garden of Eden. (And enough about what had just happened downstairs on the front porch between me and someone infinitely better than any figment of my longing.)

  Hell. It was the damned flowers all over the bed! She was patiently waiting, naked breasts against me, red hair snarled in the roses, just looking at me, green eyes and soft mouth actually sweet. A preternatural being, and I had known the most miraculous of them. What was getting to me? Kindly continue as if nothing was wrong.As if you have not done Evil again, you fiend!

  "Surrender to both of us, me and the Blood," I said. "I want you and Quinn to be perfect the way I'm not. I want to take you through an apprenticeship that's flawless. You hear me? Quinn was twice maimed when twice born. Bad mothers. I want to erase that from his heart."

  I felt Quinn's gentle squeeze on my arm. An assent even though I was lying practically on top of the succulent little love of his life, now transformed into his immortal companion.

  "The Blood told me things," she said. She was in no hurry. Her tears were dried, like ashes flaking on her cheeks. "It was coherent, the Blood," she said. "I didn't realize it until it was over. It felt too good. Then came the thoughts. I know you've survived centuries. You've even survived yourself. You went into a desert place like Christ. You didn't die because your blood's too strong. You're afraid you can't die. Everything you've believed in has been shattered. You tell yourself you have no illusions, but that's not true."

  She shivered again. It was advancing too fast for her. Maybe too fast for me. Where was that ghost? Tell her about the ghost? No. I was relieved she couldn't read my mind anymore
.

  "I have no theology of us," I said to her. I was really talking to Quinn too. "God tolerates us, but what does that mean?"

  She smiled almost bitterly. "Who has a theology of now, anyway?" she asked.

  "Lots of people. Your Fr. Kevin, it seems," I replied.

  "He has a Christology," she replied. "It's different."

  "Sounds awfully good to me," I said.

  "Oh, come on, he couldn't convert you if he had the next hundred years."

  I thought bitterly of Memnoch, the Devil. I thought of God Incarnate, with whom I'd spoken. I thought of all my doubts that any of it had been real, of all my suspicions that I was the mere pawn of spirits in some elaborate game, and of how I'd fled Perdition, with its myriad roaring holographs of confrontational guilt for the cold snow-filled streets of New York, avowing the material, the sensual, the solid above all illusions. Did I really not believe in those things which I saw? Or had I simply found that cosmos to be unendurable?

  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, th
e 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.