Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [87]
I felt the life drawn out of his frail limbs, heard her gasping swallows, his whole frame giving one full spasm.
“Leave him alive,” I whispered. Who was I kidding?
Hand on my shoulder. I looked up. The big stupid-eyed bodyguard, almost too stoned to know why he was suspicious or what to do about it, yeah right, but Quinn was already drawing him away and had him paralyzed, the guy with his broad hunched back to the press of the party and Quinn drawing quietly and slowly for the blood. What does that look like, that he’s whispering in the dude’s ear? Most likely.
The laughing, gulping, gurgling crowd rolled on, a waiter nearly stepping on me with his precarious tray. “No thanks, I don’t need a drink,” I said, which was true.
But I liked the pale yellow color of the champagne in those glasses. And I liked the spattering and burbling and dancing of the water in the fountain in the middle of the crowd, and I liked the pure rectangular lights of all the hotel windows climbing and climbing in beauteous parallel rows above us to the rosy sky, and I liked the low raw saxophone of the jazz samba dancing with itself, and I liked the fluttering of the leaves in the potted trees, which everyone on the terrace ignored but me. I liked—.
The dazed bodyguard staggered. An underling caught his arm, scheming and proud to have him at a disadvantage. The pimp was dead. Oops. Such a brilliant career slumped over the fence. Mona’s eyes were electric. Drugs in the blood.
“Get the host a chair,” I said to the first waiter I could snare. “I think he’s overdosed and he’s holding.”
“Oh MaGod!” Half the drinks on his tray crashed into the other half. Customers turning, murmuring. After all, the host had slipped down to the tile floor. Not so good for the slave trade.
Out of there.
Luscious gloom of hotel mezzanine floor, marble and golden lights, mirrored elevator, swoosh of doors, glowing fields of carpet, gift shop full of pink stuffed monsters, heavy glass, outside pavements, filth, shrieks of tourist laughter, innocent and deodorized half-naked people of all ages in wrinkle-free scraps of brightly dyed clothing, paper trash in the gutters, glorious heat, screeching roar of the crowded St. Charles Street car rounding the bend onto Canal.
So many . . . many good people . . . so very happy.
20
WE WERE BACK at the flat. Rear parlor. My darlings on the couch. The drugs in their blood had played out on the walk back. Me at the desk but facing them.
I told her to change clothes. That short sequined dress was just too damned distracting. And we had some heavy matters to address immediately.
“Are you serious!” she demanded. “You’re not honestly telling me what I can and cannot wear, you don’t for one minute think I’m going to listen to this, this is not the eighteenth century, baby. I don’t know what castle you grew up in, but I assure you I don’t change my mode of dress for feudal lords, no matter—.”
“Beloved Boss, could you not simply ask Mona to change her dress instead of telling her!” said Quinn with restrained exasperation.
“Yeah, what about that!” she said, leaning forward, accentuating her cleavage swelling under the sequined band across her breasts.
“Mona, my darling,” I said with perfect candor, “ma chérie, my beauty, please change into something less fetching. I find it hard to think, for you are so lovely in that dress. Forgive me. I lay my shameful omnisensual impulses at your feet. A tribute. I, having spent two centuries in the Blood, should possess a wisdom and restraint that makes such a request unnecessary, but alas, within my heart I feed a human flame that it may never completely go out, and it is the heat of this flame which distracts me now and renders me so powerless in your presence.”
She narrowed her eyes and puckered her brows. Exploring me as best she could for mockery. Finding none. Then her lower lip began to tremble.
“Can you really help me find Morrigan?” she asked.
“I don’t talk till you change