Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [133]
“Hmmm. . . .” I felt uneasy about the island. All that jungle. I wish I had taken the time to walk through that jungle. “Where are the Taltos?”
“You want the short answer, or the story?”
“You kidding?”
“Well, Miravelle and Oberon spent the morning and early afternoon at the First Street house in the company of Dolly Jean and Tante Oscar,” said Stirling. “It was quite amazing. At times, I thought I was hallucinating. Apparently Tante Oscar has not left her French Quarter apartment in years. You remember, she wears three and four dresses at a time?”
“Yes indeed I remember,” I said. “She spreads evil rumors about me. I’d set her right, but if she’s really over a hundred years old, I might give her a heart attack.”
“Good point. When Dolly Jean called her on the famous refrigerated telephone, she agreed to come to First Street if the car were sent, and she spent the afternoon with Dolly Jean and Michael regaling ‘the Walking Babies’ with stories, or with Miravelle or Oberon regaling them, I’m not quite sure which, but all of it has been recorded for posterity by me and by Michael. Miravelle was shocked by a great deal that the two old women had to say, but Oberon was in hysterics. He thought them the funniest human beings he’d ever met, and he was stomping his foot and slamming the table.
“Naturally I was enthralled merely watching this entire collection of beings, including Tante Oscar.” He drew on his cigarette. “She was indeed wearing some three or four dresses under her maroon fox-trimmed coat, and a black hat with roses on it and a little face veil, and she does have eyes like eggs. She entered the house making the Sign of the Cross over and over again, rosary beads running through her right hand, a battalion of exquisite twelve-year-old boys accompanying her up the marble steps and into the dining room. The boys soon discovered the swimming pool and were invited to swim and went to it with gusto. They might be still swimming now. Apparently they’d never been swimming in their lives before.”
Stirling stopped.
The Dazzling Duo had appeared. Both were tricked out in safari jackets and khaki slacks, Quinn with an open shirt, Mona with an olive green turtleneck—a startling contrast to the formal clothes they’d always worn before.
They were both pale and a little gaunt. They had no need to feed, thanks to last night’s repast, but apparently the dark adventure had taken their energy. Quinn appeared to be fasting. Mona looked wounded and frail.
Just for a moment, I saw in her the gaunt dying girl she’d been when I first laid eyes on her. It frightened me.
Kisses and hugs for Stirling, who rose to his feet to receive them.
I clasped her hand and she bent low to kiss me on the mouth. I felt a fever in her, as though her body were consuming her past dreams. And an ashen sadness clouded her vision.
She came right to the point, even before she flopped into a wicker chair and put her feet up on the table.
“Rowan has to know whether they’re alive or dead by now,” she said.
“Darling, they’re dead,” said Stirling, “there’s no question. They’ve been brought up to a temperature of perhaps forty degrees, and connected to every sort of monitor known to Rowan. There’s no life in them whatsoever. Only a gold mine of tissue and blood and bone which Rowan wants to examine.”
“Oh, yeah, oh of course,” said Mona in a low fast-running voice. She closed her eyes. She seemed so lost. “So the Mad Scientist must be overjoyed.”
“What about the poison?” I asked. “Oberon said that Ash and Morrigan had been slowly poisoned by the rebel children.”
Stirling nodded. “There