Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [130]
“This must be one hell of a saint,” said Rowan under her breath.
“On board,” I said, “Oberon can tell you all about him.”
“Wait, I’m forgetting the statue!” Oberon cried out at the top of the stairs. “How could I do such a thing?”
“I promise to bring it to you,” I said. “Besides, the Mayfairs will buy you whatever you want. Go on, board.”
He did as I told him to do, then appeared again:
“But remember, that’s the statue connected to the miracle! You have to get it!”
“I have no intention of forgetting it,” I said. He disappeared.
Now only Rowan was left, standing there with Mona and Quinn and me.
“Where are you going now?” asked Rowan.
“Blackwood Farm,” said Quinn. “We three, we stick together.”
Rowan looked at me. No one has ever looked at me in quite the same way that Rowan does.
She nodded.
She turned to go, then turned back and put her arms around me, a warm bundle of life entrusted to me. Every barrier inside me collapsed.
We kissed as if no one was there to see it, over and over, until it was a little language of its own, her breasts very hot against my chest, my hands clutching her hips, my eyes closed, my mind mute for once as if my body had driven it back, or so inundated it with sensation that it could not tell me what to do. And at last, she pulled away, and I turned my back. The blood thirst was paralyzing me. The want was paralyzing me. And then there broke loose the love, the pure love.
I stood motionless, realizing it for what it was. Pure love. And connecting it suddenly and helplessly with the love I’d felt when I’d kissed Patsy’s phantom at the edge of the swamp: pure love.
And my mind cast back over the centuries, like the mechanism of conscience determined to ferret out sin, only it searched for moments of pure love. And I knew them, secret, silent, few, splendid. Splendid in their own power, whether the loved one ever knew it or not, splendid to have loved—.
Flash on the couple in each other’s arms, Ash and Morrigan, the white mist rising from them. Emblem of pure love.
The awareness dissolved. Quinn moved me away from the roar of the jet engines. We walked off the tarmac.
We were silent in the noise of the departing plane. At last it made its smooth ascent. And was gone into the clouds.
The age-old mystery of the Caribbean unfolded—another tiny island soaked in blood—that this most glorious part of the world should bear witness to so many tales of violence.
Mona stood looking out to sea. The breeze lifted her full red hair. Her eyes were beyond tears. She was the very picture of mourning.
Could she begin now? Really begin, my perfect one?
I drew close to her. I didn’t want to intrude on this bereavement. But she reached out with her left arm and brought me in, and let her weight rest against me.
“This was my search,” she said, eyes faraway, “this was my dream, my dream that overleapt the Dark Blood—the dream that carried me through all the pain that preceded it.”
“I know,” I said. “I understand you.”
“That I would find my Morrigan,” she said, “that I would find them living in happiness, that I would know her again with all her madness and we would talk the long nights away, exchanging kisses, our lives touching and then parting. And now . . . it’s all ruin.”
I waited, out of respect for what she’d said. Then I spoke:
“They did live in happiness for a very long time,” I said. “Oberon described it to us. They lived for years as the Secret People.” I reminded her as best I could of what Oberon had told us.
Slowly she yielded to a nod, her eyes on the placid and warm sea. It made no impression upon her. “They should have let us help!” she whispered. “Michael and Rowan would have helped! Oh, the folly of it! To think that Morrigan wouldn’t let him call Rowan. Because she was jealous! Oh, Rowan, Rowan.”
I held my thoughts to myself.
“Come home to Blackwood Farm,” said Quinn. “There’s time to mourn and time to know Miravelle and Oberon and even Lorkyn.”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “These Taltos are not for me, not now. Miravelle