Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [149]
Her hand moved over my shoulder, over my chest.
“You know what I want of you,” she said in that deep lustrous voice, her words underscored with pain and determination. “I want it from you, and I want you. I’ve told myself all the noble reasons to turn away from it, I’ve told myself all the moral arguments, my mind has been a confessional, a pulpit, a place beneath the porch where the philosophers gather. My mind has been a forum. In the emergency room I worked day after day until I could hardly stand any longer. Lorkyn’s learned from me and me from Lorkyn, and programs of study have been designed for Oberon and Miravelle, and we have talked the nights through with formulations and proposals in which they are enshrined and encapsulated, and their collective well-being has been institutionalized, and good will surrounds them and stimulates them—and my soul, my soul has remained steadfast. My soul craves this miracle! My soul craves your face, you! My soul has been always with you.” She sighed. “My love. . . .”
Silence. The songs of the swamp. The songs of those birds who always begin before morning. And the sound of the water moving, and the leaves all around us listing to a faint and uncertain breeze.
“This is something I never expected to feel again,” she whispered. “I thought it would never come to me again,” I felt her trembling. “That those parts of me had been forever burnt out,” she said. “Yes, I love Michael and will forever, but what that love demands of me is that I set Michael free. Michael languishes in my shadow. Michael wants and should possess a simple woman who can bear him a wholesome child. And we’ve lived together in mourning for what might have been had monsters not possessed us and ruined us. We’ve whispered our Requiems for too long.
“And then this fire is born. Oh, not because of what you are! What you are could terrify. What you are could repel! But because of who you are, the soul inside you, the words you speak, the expression on your face, the certain witness of eternity I read in you! My world collapses when I’m near you. My values, my ambitions, my plans, my dreams. I see them as the scaffolding of hysteria. And this love has taken root, this savage love which knows no fear of you, and only wants to be with you, wants the Blood, yes, because it’s your blood, and all else melts away.”
I waited. I listened to the rhythm of her heart. I listened to the blood inside her. I listened to her sweet breath. I held myself back—the raging animal that had so many times shattered the cage and taken the object of its desire. I wrapped her so close!
For an age it seemed I held her.
Then I found myself letting her go, folding her limbs against her own breast, and rising and leaving her, refusing her outstretched hands, refusing them with kisses, but leaving her and walking to the edge of the swamp alone, my body growing cold, so cold it was as if some northern winter had found me in the gentle heat and driven its teeth into me.
I stood alone, so very alone, looking into the gnawing unformed morass of the swamp, and thinking only of her and letting my imagination run rampant with the undisciplined glory of loving her, of having her. The world reborn in love, and common things overlayered with common despair leapt into colors brilliant and irresistible. What was this point in time to me? What was this place called Blackwood Farm that I couldn’t take her with me and shake its dust from off my feet and soar with her to other lands of certain enchantment?
Oh yes, and what has this to do with pure love, Lestat? What is the luster of pure love? What is the luster of that most uncommon one who lies there waiting?
I don’t know how long I stood there, apart from her. My rosy dreams of palaces, of wanderings, of bowers and realms of love were vaporous and great and small and vanishing.
And she was there, patient, wise—condemned by her own lips, wasn’t she?
A sadness came to me, as pure as pure love, and then