Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [127]
Mona stepped into the lighted rectangle of the door. “That’s my daughter,” she whispered. No tears. No sobs.
I felt the immense falling off in her of hope, of dreams, of love itself. I saw the bitter acceptance in her face, the deep drifting.
Miravelle was crying. “So he made them hard as ice, that’s what he did,” she cried. She put her hands to her face and cried and cried.
I knelt down beside the pair, and I laid my hand on the man’s head. Frozen solid. If there was a soul in there, I couldn’t feel it. But what did I know? Same with the red-haired woman, so resembling Mona in her fresh Nordic beauty.
I walked carefully out of the freezer until I reached the warm air, and I took Mona in my arms. She was shaking all over but her eyes were dry and squinting in the white mist. Then she roused herself as best she could.
“Come on, Miravelle, my dear,” she said. “Let’s close the door. Let’s wait for help to come.”
“But who can help?” said Miravelle. “Lorkyn will make us do what she wants us to do. And all the others are gone.”
“Don’t worry about Lorkyn,” said Quinn.
Oberon wiped away his tears disgustedly, and once again he took Miravelle in his arms and embraced her warmly. He reached out his right hand, with its long delicate fingers, and stroked Mona’s bowed head, and drew her close to him.
We closed the freezer door.
“Quinn,” I said, “punch in First Street for me, then give me the little phone.”
He obliged with one-handed dexterity, still keeping Lorkyn prisoner with a left-handed grip.
Lorkyn’s face was sweet and musing, revealing nothing. Oberon, though he held Miravelle and Mona both, was glaring at Lorkyn with undisguised malice.
“Watch,” I whispered to Mona.
Then I was on the phone:
“Lestat to speak to Rowan about Morrigan.”
Her low husky voice came on the line: “What have you got for me, Lestat?”
I told her everything. “How fast can you get here?”
Mona took the phone from me. “Rowan, they could be alive! They could be in suspended animation!”
“They’re dead,” said Lorkyn.
Mona surrendered the phone.
Rowan asked: “Will you stay until I get there?”
“We’re creatures of the dark, my beloved,” I said. “As mortals are wont to say: Make it snappy.”
It was two a.m. when the jet landed. It barely made it on the long runway.
By that time, Mona and I—leaving Oberon and Lorkyn in the custody of Quinn—had spent two hours getting rid of every corpse on the island. To the devouring sea we fed the remains even to the grisly remnants of the charred and smoking copter—a grim task, save for the placid overpowering waves of the Caribbean, so quickly forgiving every unclean offering.
Just before the plane landed, Mona and I had also discovered Lorkyn’s digs—quite gorgeous, with a computer that was indeed hooked up to the outside world, and loaded with information about the Drug Merchants, and bank accounts in a dozen places at least.
But what had astonished both of us was the medical information of all kinds—countless articles downloaded from seemingly respectable sources on every aspect of health care, from studies of diet to neurosurgery and the intricacies of heart bypass operations and the removal of tumors of the brain.
In fact, there was far more medical information than we could conceivably examine.
Then we hit the material on Mayfair Medical.
And it was there, in that strange place, in moments sandwiched between violence and mystery, that I realized how immense the Mayfair Medical project was, how multifaceted and daring and full of promise. I saw the layout of the hospital and laboratories. I saw lists of doctors, lists of units and programs and research teams.
In addition, Lorkyn had downloaded dozens of articles about the Center which had appeared