Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(65)
Author: Anne Rice

“Stop lying,” said Rowan Mayfair. “You’re guilty, and you didn’t accomplish this alone. Look at me.”

“I will not!” said Gordon. “The Mayfair witches,” he said bitterly, all but spitting out the words. “And this thing, this thing you’ve conjured from the swamps, this Lasher, is it your avenger, your Golem?”

The man was suffering exquisitely. His face was white with shock. But he was far from defeated.

“All right,” said Ash quietly. “I’m going to kill you, and the witches can’t stop me. Do not think that they can.”

“No, you won’t!” said Gordon, turning so that he might face Ash as well as Rowan Mayfair, his head back against the upholstered corner of the car.

“And why is that?” asked Ash gently.

“Because I have the female!” whispered Gordon.

Silence.

Only the sounds of traffic around them as the car moved speedily and belligerently ahead.

Ash looked at Rowan Mayfair. Then at Michael Curry, peering back at him from the front seat. And finally at Yuri, across from him, who seemed unable to think or to speak. Ash let his eyes return to Gordon.

“I’ve always had the female,” said Gordon, in a small, heartfelt, yet sardonic voice. “I did this for Tessa. I did it to bring the male to Tessa. That was my purpose. Now let go of me, or you will never lay eyes on Tessa, any of you. Especially not you, Lasher, or Mr. Ash, whoever you may be. Whatever you call yourself! Or am I tragically mistaken, and do you have a harem of your own?”

Ash opened his fingers, stretching them, letting them frighten Gordon, and then withdrawing them and laying his hand in his lap.

Gordon’s eyes were red and teary. Still stiff with outrage, he pulled out a huge, rumpled handkerchief and blew his tender-looking beak of a nose.

“No,” said Ash quietly. “I’m going to kill you now, I think.”

“No! You’ll never see Tessa!” snapped Gordon.

Ash leaned over him, very close to him. “Then take me to her, please, immediately, or I will strangle you now.”

Gordon was silent, but only for a moment.

“Tell your driver to go south,” he said. “Out of London, towards Brighton. We’re not going to Brighton, but that will do for now. It’s an hour and a half.”

“Then we have time to talk, don’t we?” asked the witch, Rowan. Her voice was deep, almost husky. She made a dazzle in Ash’s vision, glinting slightly in the dark car. Her br**sts were small but beautifully shaped beneath the black silk lapels of the deep-cut jacket. “Tell me how you could do it,” she said to Gordon. “Kill Aaron. You’re a man like Aaron, yourself.”

“I didn’t do it,” said Gordon bitterly. “I didn’t want it done. It was a stupid, stupid, and vicious thing to do. And it happened before I could stop it. Same with Yuri and the gun. I had nothing to do with it. Yuri, in the coffee shop, when I told you I was concerned for your life, I meant it. There are some things which are simply beyond my control.”

“I want you to tell us everything now,” said Michael Curry. He looked at Ash as he spoke. “We really can’t restrain our friend here. And we wouldn’t even if we could.”

“I’m not telling you anything more,” said Gordon.

“That’s foolish,” said Rowan.

“No, it isn’t,” said Gordon. “It’s the only move I have. Tell you what I know before you reach Tessa, and when you have her, you’ll do away with me at once.”

“I’ll probably do it anyway,” said Ash. “You are buying a few hours of life.”

“Not so quick. There are many things I can tell you. You have no idea. You’ll need much more than a few hours.”

Ash didn’t reply.

Gordon’s shoulders slumped. He took a deep breath, eyeing his captors one by one again, and then returning to Ash. Ash had drawn back until he too was in the corner. He did not wish to be near this human, this feisty and vicious human whom he knew that he would eventually kill.

He looked at his two witches. Rowan Mayfair sat with her hand on her knee, much as Ash did, and she raised her fingers now in a rolling gesture, begging him, perhaps, to be patient.

The snap of a lighter startled Ash.

“Mind if I smoke, Mr. Ash, in your fancy car?” asked Michael Curry from the front seat. His head was already bowed over the cigarette and the tiny flame.

“Please, do what you wish,” said Ash with a cordial smile.

To his amazement, Michael Curry smiled back at him.

“There’s whiskey in this car,” said Ash. “There is ice and water. Would any of you care for a drink?”

“Yeah,” said Michael Curry with a little sigh, exhaling the cigarette. “But in the name of virtue, I’ll wait till after six.”

And this witch can father the Taltos, Ash thought, studying Michael Curry’s profile and his slightly crude but charmingly proportioned features. His voice had a lust in it that surely extended to many things, thought Ash. Look at the way he is watching the buildings as we pass them. He misses nothing.

Rowan Mayfair continued to look only at Ash.

They had just left the city proper.

“This is the right way,” said Gordon, in a thick voice. “Keep going until I tell you.”

The old man looked away as if he were merely checking their position, but then his forehead struck the window hard, and he began to weep.

No one spoke. Ash merely looked at his witches. Then he thought of the photograph of the red-haired one, and when he let his eyes drift to Yuri, who sat directly opposite, beside Rowan, he saw that Yuri’s eyes were closed. He had curled up against the side of the car, his head turned away from them, and he too was shedding tears, without making much of a sound.

Ash leant forward to lay a comforting hand on Yuri’s leg.

Fourteen

IT WAS ONE o’clock, perhaps, when Mona woke up in the upstairs front bedroom, her eyes turned towards the oaks outside the window. Their branches were filled with bright Resurrection ferns, once again green from the recent spring rain.

“Phone for you,” said Eugenia.

Mona almost said, God, I’m glad someone’s here. But she didn’t like admitting to anyone that she’d been spooked in the famous house earlier, and that her dreams had been deeply disturbing to her.

Eugenia looked askance at Mona’s big, billowy white cotton shirt. So what was wrong? It was loungewear, wasn’t it? In the catalogs, they called them Poets’ Shirts.