Blood Canticle (The Vampire Chronicles 10)
Stella!
It seemed monstrous, like the little girl I knew stretched and pulled and blown up; cigarette in a holder, poised in her left hand.
"Ducky, don't be so silly!" she said. "Of course it's me! Oncle Julien's so frightened of you now, he won't come near you. But he just had to send the message: 'That was superb!' "
She vanished before I could throw one of my boots at her. But I wouldn't have done that anyway.
What did it matter? Let them come and go. After all, this was Blackwood Farm, wasn't it, and Blackwood Farm has always opened its portals to ghosts.
And now I lay me down to sleep, and the book comes to a close.
Against the deep down pillow, I realized something. Even in grief and loss, I possessed Rowan. She was a presence within me forever. My loneliness would never again be as bitter. Over the years she might drift away from me, she might come to condemn the point of passion that had brought her to my arms. She might be lost to me in some other mundane fashion that would wring tears from me all my nights.
But I'd never really lose her. Because I wouldn't lose the lesson of love I'd learned through her. And this she had given me as I had tried to give it to her.
And so the morning dew covered the grass on that day at Blackwood Farm like any other, and I dreamt before the sun rose that:
I wanna be a saint, I wanna save souls by the millions, I wanna look like an angel, but I don't wanna talk like a gangster, I don't want to do bad things even to bad guys, I wanna be Saint Juan Diego. . . .
. . . But you know me, and come sunset, maybe it will be time to hunt the back roads, and those little out- of-the-way beer joints, sure enough, smell the malt and the sawdust, and yeah, right on, dance to the Dixie Chicks on the jukebox, and maybe crush a couple of heavy-duty Evil Doers, guys who are just waiting for me, and when I'm flush with blood, and sick of the smack and roll of the pool balls and that warm light on the green felt, who knows, yeah, who knows just how glorious the firmament with all its breaking clouds and lost little stars will appear as I rise above this Earth and spread out my arms as though there was no want in me for anything warm or good.
Be gone from me, oh mortals who are pure of heart. Be gone from my thoughts, oh souls that dream great dreams. Be gone from me, all hymns of glory. I am the magnet for the damned. At least for a little while. And then my heart cries out, my heart will not be still, my heart will not give up, my heart will not give in-
-the blood that teaches life will not teach lies, and love becomes again my reprimand, my goad, my song.
THE END