Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(25)
Author: Anne Rice

“He knew, Yuri. He knew. You told me how he warned you not to come back here, how he said they’d come for him at any time.”

“Ah, but I …”

“Don’t hold on to it with guilt, my young friend,” said Ash.

Yuri felt the big, spidery hands close tenderly on his shoulders.

“Aaron … Aaron was my father,” Yuri said in a monotone. “Aaron was my brother. Aaron was my friend.” Inside him the grief and the guilt boiled and the stark, awful terror of death became unendurable. It doesn’t seem possible that this man is gone, totally gone from life, but it will begin to seem more and more possible, and then real, and then absolute.

Yuri might as well have been a boy again, in his mother’s village in Yugoslavia, standing by her dead body on the bed. That had been the last time he’d known such pain as this; he couldn’t bear it. He clenched his teeth, fearing that in an unmanly way he would cry out or even roar.

“The Talamasca killed him,” said Yuri. “Who else would have done it? Lasher—the Taltos—is dead. He didn’t do it. Lay all the murders upon them. The Taltos killed the women, but he did not kill the men. The Talamasca did it.”

“Was it Aaron who killed the Taltos?” asked Ash. “Was he the father?”

“No. But he did love a woman there, and now perhaps her life too has been destroyed.”

He wanted to lock himself in the bathroom. He had no clear image of what he meant to do. Sit on the marble floor, perhaps, with his knees up, and weep.

But neither of these two strange individuals would hear of it. In concern and alarm, they drew him back into the living room of the suite, and seated him on the sofa, the tall one being most careful not to hurt his shoulder, the little man rushing to prepare some hot tea. And bring him cakes and cookies on a plate. A feeble meal, but a particularly enticing one.

It seemed to Yuri that the fire was burning too fast. His pulse had quickened. Indeed, he felt himself breaking out in a sweat: He took off the heavy sweater, pulling it roughly over his neck, causing intense pain in his shoulder before he realized what he was doing, and before he realized he had nothing on under his sweater and was now sitting here bare-chested, with the sweater in his hands. He sat back and hugged the sweater, uncomfortable to be so uncovered.

He heard a little sound. The little man had brought him a white shirt, still wrapped around laundry cardboard. Yuri took it, opened it, unbuttoned it, and slipped it on. It was absurdly too big for him. It must have belonged to Ash. But he rolled up the sleeves and buttoned several of the buttons and was grateful to be concealed once more. It felt comforting, like a great pajama shirt. The sweater lay on the carpet. He could see the grass in it, the twigs and bits of soil clinging to it.

“And I thought I was so noble,” he said, “not calling him, not worrying him, letting the wound heal and getting back on my feet before I reported in, to confirm to him that I was well.”

“Why would the Talamasca kill Aaron Lightner?” asked Ash. He had retreated to his chair and was sitting with his hands clasped between his knees. Again, he was ramrod straight and unlikely and very handsome.

Good Lord, it was as if Yuri had been knocked unconscious, and was seeing all of this again for the first time. He noticed the simple black watchband around Ash’s wrist, and the gold watch itself, with digital numbers. He saw the red-haired hunchback standing at the window, which he had opened a crack now that the fire was positively roaring. He felt the ice blade of the wind cleave through the room. He saw the fire arch its back and hiss.

“Yuri, why?” asked Ash.

“I can’t answer. I had hoped somehow we were mistaken, that they hadn’t had such a heavy hand in all this, that they hadn’t killed innocent men. That it was a fanciful lie or something, that they had the female that they had always wanted. I couldn’t think of such a tawdry purpose. Oh, I don’t mean to offend you—”

“—of course not.”

“I mean, I had thought their aims so lofty, their whole evolution so remarkably pure—an order of scholars who record and study, but never interfere selfishly in what they observe; students of the supernatural. I think I’ve been a fool! They killed Aaron because he knew about all this. And that’s why they must kill me. They must let the Order sink back into its routines, undisturbed by all this. They must be watching at the Motherhouse. They must be anxious to prevent me entering it at all costs. They must have the phones covered. I couldn’t call there or Amsterdam or Rome if I wanted to. They’d intercept any fax that I sent. They’ll never let down this guard, or stop looking for me, till I’m dead.

“Then who will there be to go after them? To tell the others? To reveal the awful secret to the brothers and sisters that this Order is evil … that the old maxims of the Catholic Church perhaps have always been true. What is supernatural and not of God is evil. To find the male Taltos! To bring him together with the female …”

He looked up. Ash’s face was sad. Samuel, leaning against the closed window, appeared, for all the fleshy folds of his face, sad and concerned as well. Calm yourself, he thought, make your words count. Do not lapse into hysteria.

He went on. “You speak of centuries, Ash,” he said, “the way others speak of years. Then the female within the Talamasca might have lived for centuries. This might have been the only purpose always. Out of dark times, a web spun that is so evil and so perverse that modern men and women can’t even conceive of it! It’s too simple, all of these stupid men and women watching out for one single being—a Taltos, a creature that can breed with its mate so fast and so successfully that its kind would quickly overtake the world. I wonder what makes them so sure of themselves, the invisible and anonymous and secretive Elders of the Order, so sure that they themselves are not being—”

He paused. It had never occurred to him. Of course. Had he ever been in a room with a sentient being who wasn’t human? Now he was, and who was to say how many such species lived in our comfortable little world, walking about, passing for human while servicing their own agenda in every respect? Taltos. Vampire. The aged dwarf, with his own clock and his own grudges and stories.

How quiet they both were. Had there been an unspoken decision to let him rave?

“You know what I would like to do?” Yuri asked. “What?” asked Ash.

“Go to the Amsterdam Motherhouse and kill them, the Elders. But that’s just it, I don’t think I can find them. I don’t think they are in the Amsterdam Motherhouse, or that they ever have been. I don’t know who or what they are. Samuel, I want to take the car now. I have to go home here in London. I have to see the brothers and the sisters.”