Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [265]
I kissed her. I told her I would see her at the church, and then I turned to go.
But as I glanced back at the crowd leaking out of the doorways onto the street, I saw yet another figure who astonished me—the figure of Julien Mayfair, in his fine gray suit, the suit he had worn the day he so regally entertained me with hot cocoa, standing as if he was merely taking the warm air with all the others, his eyes fixed casually on me.
He seemed as solid as every other person present, except that he was a faintly different color than everyone else, as though he had been painted in by another artist, and all the tones of his clothes and skin and hair were done in darker hues. Oh, such a fine and elegant ghost, come from who knows where, and who in the world thought that as a Blood Drinker I wouldn’t see my spirits?
“Ah, yes, she was your daughter, of course,” I said, and though there was a great distance between us, and Jasmine was looking up at me uncomprehending, he nodded and he made a very sad little smile.
“What are you saying, you crazy Little Boss?” said Jasmine. “You punchy as I am?”
“I don’t know, darling,” I answered. “I just see things, always have. Seems the living and the dead have turned out for Aunt Queen. Don’t expect me to explain it. But it’s fitting, all things considered, don’t you think?”
As I watched him, Julien’s expression gradually changed, sharpening and strengthening and then becoming almost bitter. I felt the chills coming up my neck. He shook his head in a subtle but stern negation. I felt the words coming from him soundlessly over the distance. Never my beloved Mona.
I drew in my breath. A flood of assurances came from that part of me which could reach him without words.
“Come around, Little Boss,” said Jasmine. I felt her lips on my cheek and the hard press of her vigilant fingers.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Julien, but his face was softening. It went blank.
He began to fade. And then dissolve just as Rowan and Michael, along with Dr. Winn Mayfair, came out of the nearest doorway. And who should be with them now but Stirling Oliver, Stirling who knew what I was, Stirling whom I had almost killed the night before, Stirling—gazing at me as if he accepted me when that was utterly morally impossible, Stirling whom I had so loved as my friend. I couldn’t bear their scrutiny—any of them. I couldn’t talk common talk of Mona, as if my soul didn’t hunger for her, as if I didn’t know that I could never see her again, even if they thought that I could, as if Julien’s ghost hadn’t just threatened me. I had to make a hasty exit.
And I did.
It was a night for a special killing. I pounded the hot pavements. I left the great trees of the Garden District behind me. I crossed the Avenue. I knew where to go.
I wanted a drug dealer, a wanton killer, a fine repast, and I knew where to find one; I had passed his door on gentler nights. I knew his habits. I had saved him for a time of vengeance. I had saved him for now.
It was a big two-story house on Carondolet Street, shabby to the world and rich inside with his electronic gadgets and wall-to-wall carpets, a padded cell from which he ordered executions and purchases and even put the mark on children who refused to run deliveries for him, having their tennis shoes tied together and thrown up over the electric wires to let others know that they had been killed.
I didn’t care what the world thought; I broke in on him and slaughtered his two drugged-up stumbling companions with rapid blows to the head. He scrambled for his gun. I had him by the throat, broke him open like a stem. At once I had the sweet sap of his monstrous self-love, poison plant in the garden of hate, lifting his symbolic fist against any assassin, believing to the last drop of blood that he would triumph, that somehow consciousness wouldn’t betray him, until finally he was just spilling out the child soul, the early prayers, the images of mother and kindergarten, sunshine, and his heart stopped, and I drew back, licking my