Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [33]
“We didn’t dream we’d see you, actually see you!” said the female, with heavily accented words, voice rich and beguiling and reverent. “We hoped and prayed, and here you are and it is really you.” Her lovely hands unfolded and reached out to me.
“Why did you kill innocent victims in my town,” I whispered. “Where did you get these innocent children?”
“But you, you drank from children yourself, it’s in the pages of the Chronicles,” the male said. Same accented words, courteous, gentle tone. “We were imitating you! What have we done that you have not done!”
The knot in my heart grew tighter. Those accursed deeds, those accursed confessions. Oh God, forgive me.
“You know my warnings,” I said. “Everyone knows. Stay out of New Orleans, New Orleans belongs to me. Who doesn’t know those warnings?”
“But we came to worship you!” said the male. “We’ve been here before. You never cared. It was as if you were a legend.”
Suddenly they realized their immense miscalculation. The male raced for the door, but Quinn caught his arm effortlessly and swung him around.
The female stood shocked in the center of the room, her jet black eyes staring at me, then silently moving over Mona.
“No,” she said, “no, you can’t simply destroy us, you won’t do it. You won’t take from us our immortal souls, you will not. You are our dream, you are our model in all things. You cannot do this to us. Oh, I beg you, make of us your servants, teach us all things. We’ll never disobey! We’ll learn everything from you.”
“You knew the law,” I said. “You chose to break it. You thought you’d slip in and out, leaving your sins behind you. And you murder children in my name? You do this in my city? You never learned from my pages. Don’t throw them in my face.” I began to tremble. “You think I confessed what I did for you to follow my example? My faults were no template for your abominations.”
“But we adore you!” said the male. “We come in pilgrimage to you. Bind us to yourself and we’ll be filled with your grace, we’ll be perfected in you.”
“I have no absolution for you,” I said. “You stand condemned. It’s finished.”
I heard Mona let out a little moan. I could see the struggle in Quinn’s face.
The male tensed his entire body trying to get loose. Quinn held him with one hand wrapped around his upper arm.
“Let us go,” said the male. “We’ll leave your city. We’ll warn others never to come. We’ll testify. We’ll be your holy witnesses. Everywhere we go, we will tell others that we’ve seen you, heard the warning from your own lips.”
“Drink,” I said to Quinn. “Drink till there’s no more to drink. Drink as you’ve never done it before.”
“I begrudge nothing!” whispered the male and he closed his eyes. All the struggling left him. “I am your fount in love.”
Without hesitation, Quinn put his right hand on the huge mass of springy hair of the male and brought the head to the proper position, twisting it until the neck was bared, and then, closing his eyes, he sank his teeth.
Mona stared enthralled, then turned sharply to the female. The thirst transformed Mona’s face. She appeared half asleep, eyes fastened to the female.
“Take her,” I said.
The female gazed fearlessly on Mona. “And you, so beautiful,” the vagrant said in her sharpened words, “you so beautiful, you come to take my blood, I give my blood, here, I give it to you. Only spare me for eternity.” She opened her arms, these arms with gold bracelets, long fingers beckoning.
Mona moved as if in a trance. She embraced the sleek body of the female with her left arm, and pushed the hair away from the right side of the female’s face, and bent her supple body down and took her.
I watched Mona. It was always a spectacle—the vampire feeding, a seeming human with her teeth locked to another, eyes closed as if in deep sleep, no sound, only the victim