Blood Canticle (The Vampire Chronicles 10)

"And things happened," she said. "People wanted me

to die. Something happened. Someone . . . People wanted me to get it over with. . . . "

"Did you want to get it over with?"

She didn't answer right away, then she said, "I wanted to escape. But when someone . . . someone. . . . My thoughts became-"

"-became what?"

"Became trivial. "

"No, not so," I insisted.

"How to get out of the room, how to get all the way down the steps, how to scoot behind the wheel of the limo, how to get the flowers, how to get to Quinn-. "

"I see. Poetic. Specific. Not trivial. "

"A destination with the sanction of poetry, perhaps," she said. " 'There with fantastic garlands did she come. ' And so I did. "

"Most certainly," I said. "But before you could do it-you were going to say something, you were about to say something about someone. . . . "

Silence.

"Then Rowan came," she said. "You don't know my cousin Rowan. "

(I don't?)

Flash of pain in her clear brilliant eyes.

"Yeah, well, Rowan came," she said. "Rowan has this power. . . . "

"Was it for your sake or her sake that she was going to kill you?"

She smiled. "I don't know. I don't think she knew, either. "

"But she realized you knew and she didn't use her power. "

"I told her, I said, 'Rowan, you're scaring me! Stop it, you're scaring me!' And she burst into tears. Or was it me? I think I burst into tears! It was one of us. I was so scared. "

"And so you escaped. "

"Yes, I did, indeed I did. "

" 'Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes. ' "

She smiled again. Would she talk about the Woman Child? She lay very still.

I could feel Quinn's anxiety, and the outpouring of his love.

All the while, he hadn't moved the hand that lay on her shoulder.

"I'm not dying," she said with a shrug. "I'm here. "

"No, you're not," I said, "that's finished. "

"I've got to reach back and remember when I wanted things. "

"No, you don't," I said. "That's mortal talk. You're Mona-Born to Darkness now. " I tried to take it slowly, watching her smile come and go. Faint freckles on her face. The inevitable glister of her skin.