Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [108]
Whatever the case, she was shaken now. Badly shaken.
“Maybe she couldn’t come to me,” she whispered. “Maybe Ash Templeton wouldn’t let her.” She shook her head and put her hands to her forehead. “I don’t know what kind of creature he is! Of course Michael and Rowan thought Ash was a . . . hero, a great all-knowing, wise observer of the centuries. But what if—. I don’t know. I want to see her. I want to talk to her. I want to hear it from her, what she wants, don’t you see? Why she didn’t come to me all those years, why she didn’t even . . . Lasher, he was cruel, but he was an aberrant soul, a. . . .” She covered her mouth with her right hand, her fingers trembling.
Quinn was beside himself. He couldn’t bear to see her so unhappy.
“Mona, you can’t give her the Blood,” I said softly, “no matter what her circumstances. The Blood cannot be passed to this species of creature. It is too unknown for us even to consider such a thing. The Blood very likely can’t be passed on to them. But even if it could, we can’t make a new species of Immortal. Believe me when I say there are ancient ones of our kind who would never tolerate such a thing happening.”
“Oh, I know that, I haven’t asked for that, I wouldn’t—.” She went quiet, obviously unable to speak.
“You want to know she’s alive and well,” said Quinn in the gentlest manner. “That’s paramount, wouldn’t you say?”
Mona nodded, looking away. “Yes—that there’s a community of them somewhere, and they’re happy.” She frowned. She battled her pain. She drew in her breath, cheeks reddening. “It isn’t likely, is it?” She looked at me.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “That’s what Rowan and Michael were trying to tell us.”
“Then I have to know what happened to them!” she whispered bitterly. “I have to!”
“I’ll find out,” I said.
“You really mean that?”
“Yes,” I said. “I wouldn’t make a promise to you like that unless I meant it. I’ll find out, and if they have survived, if they do have a community somewhere, then you can decide whether or not you want to meet with them. But once a meeting occurs, they’ll know about you, what you are, everything. That is, if they have the powers that Rowan ascribed to them.”
“Oh, they have those powers,” Mona said. “They do.” She closed her eyes. She took a deep painful breath. “It’s an awful thing to admit,” she said, “but the things Dolly Jean said were all true. I can’t deny them. I can’t withhold the truth from you and Quinn. I can’t. Morrigan was . . . almost unbearable.”
“How so, unbearable?” asked Quinn.
I could see this was a radical admission. She had said things quite to the contrary.
Mona threw back her hair, her eyes searching the ceiling. She was facing something she had always denied.
“Obsessive, incessant, maddening!” she said. “She went on and on about her schemes and plans and dreams and memories, and she did say that Mayfairs would become a family of Taltos, and once she caught the scent of the Taltos male on Rowan and Michael, she was absolutely unendurable.” Mona closed her eyes. “The thought of a community of such creatures is—almost beyond my imagination. This old one, Ash Templeton, the one that Rowan and Michael knew—he had learned to pretend to be a human being, he had learned that centuries ago. That’s the thing. These creatures can live indefinitely! They are immortals! The species is utterly incompatible with humans. Morrigan was new and raw.” She looked imploringly at me.
“Take it slowly,” I said. I had never seen her suffering so. In all her bouts of tears there had been a generosity and selflessness that made them seem quite challengeable. As for her rage, she’d positively enjoyed it. But now she was truly in torment.
“It’s like me, don’t you see?” she said. “She was a newborn Taltos. And I’m a newborn Blood Child, or whatever you want to call me. And we share the same faults. She was unruly and crashing into everything around her! And that’s the way I’ve behaved, raving to