They'd cleaned away all the soot from the grave on which Merrick Mayfair had built her pyre. One would never know there had been such a blaze there. And the leaves were raked regularly, and the little chapel, quite a building, was swept clean every day.
It had no real door; its windows had no glass. It was a Gothic piece of work, all pointed arches. And inside there was a bench where one could sit and meditate.
But that wasn't my favorite spot.
My favorite spot was to sit at the foot of the biggest of the oak trees, the one that had a limb that lay on the ground above the cemetery, a limb that stretched into the swamp.
I headed there with my head down. I wasn't thinking of much of anything, except perhaps that I had seldom been this happy or this miserable in my life. I didn't need blood but I wanted it. I craved it unbearably at times. Especially on these walks. I dreamt of the prowl and of the murder. I dreamt of the soiled intimacy-the needle of my hunger plunged into heated hatefulness. But I didn't have the stamina for it just now.
The boundaries of Blackwood Farm were the boundaries of my soul.
I headed to my oak. I was going to sit there and look over the cemetery, look at the little iron lace fence with its ornate pickets, look at the graves, and the rising hulk of the chapel. And who knows? Maybe there would be a mist coming off the swamp. And the sky would turn the familiar and oh, so essential, purple before the sun came.
That was my intent.
I live in the past, the present, the future. And I was remembering that once, very near here, under the other oak tree, the one closer to the gate of the cemetery, I had met Quinn, all alone, after he had killed Patsy, and I had given him my blood to drink.
I've never in all my long wandering years been hated by anyone the way Quinn was hated by Patsy. Patsy had attached to him all the hate her soul could tender. Who can judge such a thing? Ah. My own mother, given the Blood by me, is simply uninterested in me, and more or less always was. A very different thing from hate. But what was I going to say?
Yes. That I had met Quinn, and I had given him to drink my own blood. An intimate moment. A sad and thrilling moment. And a conveying of power from me to Quinn. He'd belonged to me in that little while. I had seen his complex and trusting soul and how the Dark Trick had stolen it, and how there had emerged from the theft a bold and unyielding survivor of Quinn Blackwood, determined to make sense of what had occurred.
Our irrepressible creative power.
I loved him. Sweet, easy. No kindling of possessiveness or fierce want. No concomitant emptiness. And then to witness his fulfillment in Mona, that was finer than blood lust.
I thought of that as I approached my oak tree, as I was dreaming, and weaving into my dreams bits of poetry, poetry I stole and broke and wove into my desires: You have ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse . . . how fair is my love. Can I not envision? Can I not dream? Set me as a seal upon thine heart.
What is it to me that I catch the scent of a mortal? Blackwood Farm is a citadel of mortals. What does it matter to anyone that Lestat is walking, whom they've all made so welcome? So one of them now comes to cross my path. I close my mind. My mind collapses in upon itself and its poetry: Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee.
I found my tree and my hand found the trunk of it.
She was sitting there, sitting on the thick roots, looking up at me. Her white coat was spattered with dried blood, her name tag askew, her face drawn, her eyes huge and hungry. She rose up into my waiting arms.
I held her, this supple, feverish creature, and my soul opened. "Love you, love you as I've never loved, love you above wisdom, above courage, above the glamor of evil, above all riches and the Blood itself, love you with my humble heart which I never knew I had, my gray-eyed one, my brilliant one, my mystic of the medical magic, my dreaming one, oh, let me just surround you with my arms, I don't dare to kiss you, I don't dare-. "
She rose on tiptoe and pushed her tongue between my lips. Want you, want you with my whole soul. Do you hear me, do you know what gulf I've crossed to come to you? There is no god in my soul but you. I've belonged to greedy spirits, I've belonged to monsters made of my own flesh, I've belonged to ideas and formulae and dreams and designs of magnificence, but now I belong to you, I'm yours.
We lay down on the grass together, on the slope above the cemetery, under the canopy of the oak tree where the stars couldn't see us.
My hands wanted all of her, her flesh beneath the stiff cotton, the small full curve of her hips, her breasts, her pale neck, her lips, her privy parts, so wet and ready for my fingers, my lips grazing her throat, not daring to do more than feel the blood beneath the skin as my fingers brought her up to the climax, as she moaned against me, as her limbs went stiff with the finish, as she lay limp against my chest.
The blood thudded in my ears. It raced through my brain. It said I want her. But I lay still.
My lips were pressed to her forehead. The blood threaded through me turned to pain. The pain peaked, as her passion had peaked. And in the softness of her cheek and her lips, I knew a measure of sweetness and quiet, and the morning was still dark and the stars fought to flicker in the canopy of leaves above.
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 tog
ether 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!