Lasher (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 2)

She wanted now to die, or to sleep forever. Possibly they were the same thing.

"I thought you were something immense, something innocent," she said. "Something wholly unknown and new."

"I know you did!" he answered sharply, infuriated, and dangerous, blue eyes flashing.

"I don't think you are now."

"Your job is to find out what I am."

"I'm trying," she said.

"You know you find me beautiful."

"So what?" she said. "I hate you."

"Yes, it was plain in your notebooks, 'this new species,' 'this creature,' 'this being'--how clinically you spoke of me, and you know? You are wrong. I am not new, my darling dear, I am old, older by far than you can imagine. But my time is coming again. I could not have chosen a better moment for my childlike loving progeny. Don't you want to know what I am?"

"You're monstrous, you're unnatural, you're cruel and impulsive. You cannot think straight or concentrate. You're mad."

He was so angry that he couldn't answer her for a moment. He wanted to hit her. She could see his hand opening and closing.

"Imagine," he said, "if all mankind died out, my darling dear, and all the genes for mankind rode in the blood of one miserable apelike creature, and he passed it down and down, and finally, to the apes was born again a man!" She said nothing.

"Do you think that man would be very merciful to the lower apes? Especially if he secured a mate? An ape woman who could breed with him to form a new dynasty of superior beings--"

"You're not superior to us," she said coldly.

"The hell I'm not!" he said wrathfully.

"I don't know for sure how it happened, but I know it will never happen again."

He shook his head, smiling at her. "What a fool you are. What an egotist. You make me think of all the scientists whose words I read now and listen to on the television. It's happened before, and before and before...and this time is the right time, this time is the moment, this time there shall be no sacrifice, this time we will strive as never in the past!"

"I'll die before I help you."

He shook his head wanly. He looked away. He seemed to be dreaming. "Do you think we will be merciful when we rule? Has any superior being ever been merciful to the weaker? Were the Spaniards when they came to the New World merciful to the savages they found there? No, it's never happened in history, has it, that the higher species, the species with the advantages, has been kind to those who were lower. On the contrary, the higher species wipes out the lower. Isn't that so? It's your world, tell me about it! As if I didn't know."

The tears rose in his eyes. He laid his head on his arm and wept, and when he finished, he dried his eyes with a towel from the bath. "Oh, what might have been between us!"

"What's that?" she asked.

He started to kiss her again, to stroke her, and to open his clothes.

"Stop this. I've miscarried twice. I'm sick. Look at me. Look at my face and my hands. Look at my arms. A third miscarriage will kill me, don't you realize it? I'm dying now. You're killing me. Where will you turn when I'm gone? Who will help you? Who knows about you?"

He mused. Then, suddenly, he slapped her. He hesitated, but it seemed to have satisfied him. She was staring at him.

He laid her on the bed, and he began stroking her hair. There was very little milk now. He drank it. He massaged her shoulders and her arms, and her feet. He kissed her all over. She lost consciousness. When she came round, it was late at night, and her thighs were sore and wet from him, and from her own desire.

When they reached Houston, she realized she had arranged for a prison. The building was deserted. And she had leased two floors very high up. He indulged her for two days, as they acquired various things for their comfort in this high fairy-tale tower amid the neon and sparkling lights. She watched, she waited, she struggled to seize the slightest opportunity, but he was too wakeful, too fast.

And then he tied her up. There was to be no study, no project. "I know what I need to know."

The first time he left it was for a day. The second time for an entire night and most of the morning. The third time had been this time--four days perhaps.

And now look what he had done to this cold modern bedroom of white walls and glass windows, and laminated furniture.

Her legs hurt so much. She limped out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. He had cleaned up the bed; it was draped in rose-colored sheets, and he had surrounded it with flowers. This brought a strange image to her mind, of a woman who had committed suicide in California. She had ordered lots of flowers for herself first, then put them all around the bed, and taken poison. Or was she simply remembering Deirdre's funeral, with all those flowers and the woman in the coffin like a big doll?

This looked like a place to die. Flowers in big bouquets, and in vases everywhere she looked. And if she died, perhaps he'd blunder. He was so foolish. She had to be calm. She had to think, to live and be clever.

"Such lilies. Such roses. Did you bring them up yourself?" she asked.

He shook his head. "They were all delivered and outside the door before I ever put the key in the lock."

"You thought you'd find me dead in here, didn't you?"

"I'm not that sentimental, except when it comes to music," he said with a bright smile. "The food is in the other room. I'll bring it to you. What can I do to make you love me? Is there something I can tell you? Is there any news that will bring you to your senses?"

"I hate you totally and completely," she said. She sat down on the bed, because there were no chairs

in the room, and she could not stand any longer. Her ankles ached. Her arms ached. She was starving. "Why do you keep me alive?"

He went out and came back with a large tray full of delicatessen salads, packs of cold meat, portable processed garbage.

She ate it ravenously. Then she shoved the tray away. There was a quart of orange juice there and she drank all of it. She rose and staggered into the bathroom, nearly falling. She remained in that small room for a long time, crouched on the toilet, her head against the wall. She feared she would vomit. Slowly she made an inventory of the room. There was nothing with which to kill herself.

She wasn't going to try it yet anyway. She had fight in her, plenty of it. If necessary, the two of them would go up in flames. That she could arrange surely. But how?

Wearily, she opened the door. He was there, with arms folded. He picked her up and carried her to the bed. He had littered it with white daisies from one of the bouquets and when she sank down on the stiff stems and fragrant blossoms, she laughed. It felt so good she let herself go, laughing and laughing, until it rippled out of her just like a song.

He bent to kiss her.

"Don't do it again. If I miscarry again, I'll die. There are easier, quicker ways to kill me. You can't have a child by me, don't you understand? What makes you think you can have a child by anyone?"

"Ah, but you won't miscarry this time," he said. He lay beside her. He placed his hand on her belly. He smiled. He uttered a string of rapid syllables in a hum, his mouth grotesque for one moment as he did it--it was a language!

"Yes, my darling, my love, the child's alive and the child can hear me. The child is female. The child is there."

She screamed.

She turned her fury on the unborn thing, kill it, kill it, kill it, and then--as she lay back, drenched in sweat, stinking again, the taste of vomit in her mouth--she heard a sound that was like someone crying.

He made that strange humming song.

Then came the crying.

She shut her eyes, trying to break it down into something coherent.

She could not. But she could hear a new voice now and the new voice was inside her and it was speaking to her in a tongue she could understand, without words. It sought her love, her consolation.