The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

"Come on, Michael, get up," he said, with the sharp French accent. "You're with us now, it's quite finished, and stop fighting at once."

"Yes, get up, Michael," said Mary Beth, her dark taffeta skirt brushing his face, a tall stately woman, hair shot through and through with gray.

"You're with us now, Michael." It was Charlotte with her radiant blond hair, bosom bulging over her taffeta decolletage, lifting him, though he struggled to get away. His hand went right through her breast.

"Stop it, get away from me!" he cried. "Get away."

Stella was naked except for the little chemise falling off her shoulder, the whole side of her head dripping with blood from the bullet.

"Come on, Michael darling, you're here now, to stay, don't you see, it's finished, darling. Job well done."

The drums were thudding closer and closer, battering at the keening song of a Dixieland band, and the coffin lay open at the end of the room, with the candles around it. The candles were going to catch the drapes and burn the place down!

"Illusion, lies," he cried. "It's a trick." He tried to stand up straight, to find some direction in which to run, but everywhere he looked he saw the nine-paned windows, the keyhole doors, the oak branches piercing the ceiling and the walls and the whole house like a great monstrous trap re-forming around the struggling gnarled trees, flames reflected in the high narrow mirrors, couches and chairs overgrown with ivy and blossoming camellias. The bougainvillea swept over the ceiling, curling down by the marble mantels, tiny purple petals fluttering into the smoking flames.

The nun's hand suddenly came down like a board against the side of his face, the pain shocking him and maddening him. "What do you say, boy! Of course you're here, stand up!" That bellowing coarse voice. "Answer me, boy!"

"Get away from me!" He shoved at her in panic, but his hand passed through her.

Julien was standing there with his hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head. And behind Julien stood handsome Cortland, with his father's same expression and his father's same mocking smile.

"Michael, it should be perfectly obvious to you that you have performed superbly," said Cortland, "that you bedded her, brought her back, and got her with child, which is exactly what we wanted you to do."

"We don't want to fight," said Marguerite, her haglike hair veiling her face as she reached out for him. "We're all on the same side, mon cher. Stand up, please, come to us."

"Come now, Michael, you're making all this confusion yourself," said Suzanne, her big simpleton eyes flashing and snapping as she helped him to his feet, her breasts poking through the filthy rags.

"Yes, you did it, my son," said Julien. "Eh bien, you have been marvelous, both of you, you and Rowan, you have done precisely what you were born to do."

"And now you can go back through with us," said Deborah. She raised her hands for the others to step aside, the flames rising behind her, the smoke curling over her head. The emerald glimmered and winked against her dark blue velvet gown. The girl of Rembrandt's painting, so beautiful with her ruddy cheeks and her blue eyes, as beautiful as the emerald. "Don't you see? That was the pact. Now that he's gone through, we're all going to go back through! Rowan knows how to bring us back through, the same way that she brought him through. No, Michael, don't struggle. You want to be with us, earthbound here, to wait your turn, otherwise you'll simply be dead forever."

"We're all saved now, Michael," said fragile Antha, standing like a little girl in her simple flowered dress, blood pouring down her face on both sides from the bashed-in wound on the back of her head. "And you can't imagine how long we've been waiting. One loses track of time here ... "

"Yes, saved," said Marie Claudette. She was sitting in a big four-poster bed, with Marguerite beside her, the flames twining around the posts, eating at the canopy. Lestan and Maurice stood behind the bed, looking on with vaguely bored expressions, the light glimmering on their brass buttons, flames licking at the edges of their flared coats.

"They burned us out in Saint-Dominigue," said Charlotte, holding the folds of her lovely skirt daintily. "And the river took our old plantation."

"But this house will stand forever," said Maurice gravely, eyes sweeping the ceiling, the medallions, the listing chandeliers, "thanks to your fine efforts at restoration, and we have this safe and marvelous place in which to wait our turn to become flesh again."

"We're so glad to have you, darling," said Stella, with the same bored air, shifting her weight suddenly so that her left hip poked out the silk chemise. "Surely you don't want to pass up an opportunity like this."

"I don't believe you! You're lies, figments!" Michael spun round, head crashing through the peach-colored plaster wall. The potted fern went over on the floor. Couples writhing before him snarled as his foot went through them--through the back of the man and the belly of the woman.

Stella giggled and sprinted across the floor, pitching herself back into the satin-lined coffin and reaching out for her glass of champagne. The drums were growing louder and louder. Why doesn't everything catch fire, why doesn't it all burn?

"Because this is hell, son," said the nun, who raised her hand to slap him again. "And it just burns and burns."

"Stop it, let me go!"

He crashed into Julien, falling forward the flames flashing upward in a heated blast into his face.

But the nun had him by his collar. She had the St. Michael medal in her hand. "You dropped this, didn't you? And I told you to take care of it, didn't I? And where did I find it? I found it lying on the ground, that's where I found it!" And wham, the slap struck him again, fierce and hurtful, and he seethed with rage. She shook him as he slipped onto his knees, hands struggling to shove her away.

"All you can do now is be with us, and go back through!" said Deborah. "Don't you understand? The doorway is open; it's ju

st a matter of time. Lasher and Rowan will bring us through, Suzanne first, then I shall go and then--"

"No, wait a minute now, I never agreed to any such order," said Charlotte.

"Neither did I," said Julien.

"Who said anything about order!" roared Marie Claudette, kicking the quilt off her legs as she sat forward in the bed.

"Why are you being so foolish!" said Mary Beth, with a bored, matter-of-fact air. "My God, everything has been fulfilled. And there is no limit to how many times the transmutation can be effected, and you can imagine, can't you, the superior quality of the mutated flesh and the mutated genes. This is actually a scientific advance of stunning brilliance."

"All natural, Michael, and to understand that is to understand the essence of the world, that things are--hmmmm, more or less predetermined," said Cortland. "Don't you know you were in our hands from the very beginning?"

"That is the crucial point for you to understand," said Mary Beth reasonably.

"The fire that killed your father," said Cortland, "that was no accident ... "

"Don't say these things to me!" roared Michael. "You didn't do that. I don't believe it. I don't accept it!"

" ... to position you exactly, and see to it that you had the desired combination of sophistication and charm, so as to command her attention and cause her to let down her guard ... "

"Don't bother talking to him," the tall nun snapped, her rosary beads jangling together as they hung from her thick leather belt. "He's incorrigible. You just leave him to me. I'll slap the fire out of him."

"It isn't true," he said, trying to shield his eyes from the glare of the flames, the drums pounding through his temples. "This is not the explanation," he cried. "This is not the final meaning." He outshouted the drums.

"Michael, I warned you," came the piteous little voice of Sister Bridget Marie, who peeped around the side of the mean nun. "I told you there were witches in those dark streets."