Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [242]
“ ‘Quinn, Quinn, my pupil,’ she said in her loving voice, a voice I’d heard before so seldom from her. ‘I want you to go forth strong and on your own. So take my harsh lessons. Read their minds. Use the Spell Gift to charm. You’re hungry for them. Yes, yes, there, my pupil. Use your gifts and take the scent of their blood as your guiding genius.’
“I found myself staring at the hard-speaking one. Into her mind I did look. I saw her evil, her casual and vicious disconnect from the human herd, her brittle, cheap egocentricity. And as I drew close to her, her face was smooth, her eyes large and empty, as if I had put out my hand to her and stilled her. Her partner in crime had slunk away and with the boy moved across the room. She was all mine, deserted, enthralled, unprotesting. There was nothing but peace in her now.
“ ‘Devour the evil,’ said Petronia, near to me like my Bad Angel. ‘Eat it and make it into your clean and everlasting blood.’
“The girl had gone limp. She tumbled, silky and hot into my arms. Her head went to one side. Her mind was broken like the stem of a thorny rose. I kissed her throat. And then I sank my teeth and I felt her rich delicious blood pour forth, saltier than that of my vampire teachers, somehow more pungent, and there came the wretched story of her life, putrid, common, indecent. I sought the lush taste of the blood only. I sought the rich thick flow of the blood alone. I repudiated the images. I turned my heart away from her heart. I turned my senses only to the thick seasoned blood, and then Petronia was pulling me back, and the girl was lying at my feet, a crumpled corpse with large empty black eyes, such lovely eyes, and blood all over her neck, and Petronia said,
“ ‘You’ve spilt the blood, look at it. Bend down now and catch all of it on your tongue. Clean the wound until nothing remains.’
“I knelt down and lifted her. I did as I was told.
“ ‘Make a cut in your own tongue,’ said Petronia, ‘and with a drop of your own blood seal the wound until it disappears.’
“I was intent as I did this. I watched the tiny punctures vanish, and then the girl, pale-faced and purplish, fell limp to the tiles as I let her go.
“I rose groggily. Again, I was the drunk man. The most common object or surface seemed to pump with life.
“In a daze I reached out for Adonis. I said, ‘I thank you for your kindnesses to me.’ He was too afraid to answer. He paused, merely staring at me as though I’d forced him to do it, and then I turned away.
“Was I walking out of the bath with Petronia? Were we going up a great staircase? The evening seemed a mist rather than a thing of light. The stars seemed to move in the night sky as we walked along a roofed terrace. I could hear and smell the sea.
“We came into the room where Manfred sat at his chessboard still with Arion, and both of them appeared magnificent to me, infinitely more glorious than the two girls and the boy.
“ ‘And so we have this charged vision,’ I murmured. ‘We see all things as though they were quietly on fire in all their parts.’
“ ‘I knew you would understand,’ Petronia responded. ‘I like your words. Don’t ever be afraid to speak up to me. I watched you for years before I chose you—you and your spirits. It was language that drew me as truly as beauty.’
“ ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what you wanted?’
“She laughed a mild helpless laugh. Her warm arm was around my waist, and for the moment her beauty could touch my heart. She even had about her a gentle majesty. I felt that I adored her.
“We went out on the terrace and looked down at the sea. It was a clear green and blue below. I could see this in the dark, see it subtracting its color from the moonlighted sky. And see the stars above moving as if they meant to embrace us. Far away, there came marching down the slope a town of white buildings, so perilously perched it seemed unreal, and beyond, the snowcapped