Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(52)
Author: Anne Rice

“Who are you to question me?”

“Did you tell your men to bring the Taltos back to you?”

“Yes, but that’s what the Elders told me to do!” said the man. “What are you accusing me of? What have I done that you should come here, demanding answers of me? The Elders picked those men, not I.” The man took a deep breath, all the while studying Ash, studying the small details of his body. “Don’t you realize my position?” the man asked. “If Aaron Lightner’s been harmed, don’t you realize it’s the will of the Elders?”

“You accept this. Does anyone else?”

“No one else knows, and no one is meant to know,” said the man indignantly.

The woman let out a small gasp. Perhaps she hoped that Aaron was not dead after all. Now she knew.

“I have to tell the Elders you’re here,” said the man. “I must report your appearance at once.”

“How will you do that?”

The man gestured to the fax machine on the desk. The office was large. Ash had scarcely noticed. The fax was a plain-paper fax, replete with many glowing lights and trays for paper. The desk was full of drawers. Probably one of these harbored a gun.

“I’m to notify them immediately,” said the man. “You’ll have to excuse me now.”

“I don’t think so,” said Ash. “You are corrupt. You are no good. I can see this. You sent men from the Order to do harm.”

“I was told by the Elders.”

“Told? Or paid?”

The man was silent. In a panic he looked to the woman. “Call for help,” he said. He looked at Ash. “I said they were to bring you back. What happened was not my doing. The Elders said I was to come here and do what I had to do, at all costs.”

Once again, the woman was visibly shocked. “Anton,” she said in a whisper. She didn’t move to pick up the phone.

“I give you one final chance,” said Ash, “to tell me something that will prevent me from killing you.” This was a lie. He realized it as soon as the words were out of his mouth, but on the other hand, perhaps the man would say something.

“How dare you!” said the man. “I have but to raise my voice and help will come to me.”

“Then do it!” said Ash. “These walls are thick. But you should try it.”

“Vera, call for help!” he cried.

“How much did they pay you?” asked Ash.

“You know nothing about it.”

“Ah, but I do. You know what I am, but very little else. Your conscience is decrepit and useless. And you’re afraid of me. And you lie. Yes, you lie. In all probability you were very easy to corrupt. You were offered advancement and money, and so you cooperated with something you knew to be evil.”

He looked at the woman, who was plainly horrified.

“This has happened before in your Order,” he said.

“Get out of here!” said the man. He cried out for help, his voice sounding very big in the closed room. He cried again, louder.

“I intend to kill you,” said Ash.

The woman cried, “Wait.” She had her hands out. “You can’t do things this way. There’s no need. If some deliberate harm came to Aaron, then we must call the Council immediately. The house is filled this time of year with senior members. Call the Council now. I’ll go with you.”

“You can call them when I am gone. You are innocent. I don’t intend to kill you. But you, Anton, your cooperation was necessary for what took place. You were bought, why don’t you admit this to me? Who bought you? Your orders did not come from the Elders.”

“Yes, they did.”

The man tried to dart away. Ash reached out, easily catching hold of the man due to the uncommon length of his arms, and he wrapped his fingers very tightly around the man’s throat, more tightly perhaps than a human being could have done. He began to squeeze the life out of the man, doing it as rapidly as he could, hoping his strength was sufficient to break the man’s neck, but it wasn’t.

The woman had backed away. She’d snatched up the telephone and was now speaking into it frantically. The man’s face was red, eyes bulging. As he lost consciousness, Ash squeezed tighter and tighter until he was very sure the man was dead, and would not rise from the floor gasping for breath, as it sometimes happened. He let the man drop.

The woman dropped the telephone receiver.

“Tell me what happened!” she cried. It was almost a scream. “Tell me what happened to Aaron! Who are you?”

Ash could hear people running in the hallway.

“Quickly, I need the number through which I can reach the Elders.”

“I can’t give you that,” she said. “That’s known only to us.”

“Madam, don’t be foolish. I have just killed this man. Do as I ask you.” She didn’t move.

“Do it for Aaron,” he said, “and for Yuri Stefano.” She stared at the desk, her hand rising to her lips, and then she snatched up a pen, wrote something fast on a piece of white paper, and thrust it towards him.

There was a pounding on the double doors.

He looked at the woman. There was no time to talk further.

He turned and opened the doors, to face a large group of men and women who had only just come to a halt, to range round him and look at him.

Here were some who were old and others quite young, five women, four men, and a boy very tall, but still almost beardless. The old gentleman from the library stood among them.

He closed the doors behind him, hoping to delay the woman.

“Do you—any of you—know who I am?” Ash asked. Quickly he looked from face to face, eyes darting back and forth until he was certain he had memorized the features of each person. “Do you know what I am? Answer me, please, if you know.”

Not a single one gave him anything but a puzzled expression. He could hear the lady crying inside the room, a thick, heavy sobbing rather like her speaking voice, roughened with age.

Alarm was now spreading through the group. Another young man had arrived.

“We have to go in,” said one of the women. “We have to see what’s happened inside.”

“But do you know me? You!” Ash spoke to the latecomer now. “Do you know what I am and why I might have come here?”

None of them did. None of them knew anything. Yet they were people of the Order, scholars all, not a service person among them. Men and women in the prime of life.