Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(36)
Author: Anne Rice

“And you, all of you into hell,” cried Ash. “Why don’t I send you now?”

He turned and ran again, not sure at first of his direction. But the ascent had been steady and that was his best guide, and in the crunching of his feet, and in the crackling of the brush, and in the air rushing past him, he was safe from their drums, their pipes, their jeers.

Very soon he could no longer hear their music or their voices. Finally he knew he was alone.

Panting, chest hurting him, legs aching and feet sore, he walked slowly until, after a very long time, he came to the road, and stepped out upon the asphalt as if from a dream, and stood again in the world he knew, empty and cold and silent as it was. Stars filled every quadrant of the heavens. The moon drew her veil and then lowered it again, and the soft breeze made the pines shiver ever so slightly, and the wind swept down as if urging him onward.

When he reached the Inn, Leslie, his little assistant, was waiting up for him. With a small cry of shock, she greeted him and quickly took the torn coat from him. She held his hand as they climbed the stairs.

“Oh, so warm,” he said, “so very warm.”

“Yes, sir, and the milk.” There stood the tall glass by the bed. He drank it down. She was loosening the buttons of his shirt.

“Thank you, my dear, my little dear,” he said. “Sleep, Mr. Ash,” she said.

He fell heavily on the bed, and felt the big feather comforter come down upon him, the pillow plumping beneath his cheek, the entire bed sweet and soft as it caught him and turned him in the first circle of sleep and drew him downward.

The glen, my glen, the loch, my loch, my land.

Betrayer of your own people.

In the morning he ate a quick breakfast in his room, as his staff prepared for an immediate return. No, he would not go down to see the Cathedral this time, he said. And yes, he had read the articles in the papers. St. Ashlar, yes, he had heard that tale, too. And the young Leslie was so puzzled.

“You mean, sir, that’s not why we came here, to see the shrine of the saint?”

He only shrugged. “We’ll be back someday, my dear.”

Another time perhaps they would take that little walk.

By noon he had landed in London.

Samuel was waiting for him beside the car. He was cleanly attired in his tweed suit, with a fresh, stiff white shirt and tie, and looked the diminutive gentleman. Even his red hair was combed decently, and his face had the respectable look of an English bulldog.

“You left the gypsy alone?”

“He left while I slept,” Samuel confessed. “I didn’t hear him go out. He’s gotten clean away. He left no message.”

Ash thought for a long moment. “Probably just as well,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me that the women were gone?”

“Fool. I wouldn’t have let you go if there had been any women. You should have known. You don’t think. You don’t count the years. You don’t use reason. You play with your toys and your money and all your fine things, and you forget. You forget and that’s why you’re happy.”

The car carried them away from the airport and towards the city.

“Will you go home to your playground in the sky?” Samuel asked.

“No. You know I won’t. I have to find the gypsy,” he said. “I have to discover the secret in the Talamasca.”

“And the witch?”

“Yes.” Ash smiled and turned to Samuel. “I have to find the witch, too, perhaps. At least to touch her red hair, to kiss her white skin, to drink the scent of her.”

“And—?”

“How will I know, little man?”

“Oh, you know. You know you do.”

“Then let me in peace. For if it’s to be, my days are finally numbered.”

Six

IT WAS EIGHT o’clock when Mona opened her eyes. She heard the clock strike the hour, slowly, in deep, rich tones. But it was another sound that had awakened her, the sharp ring of a phone. It must have been coming from the library, she reasoned, and it was too far away from her and had been ringing far too long for her to answer it. She turned over, nestling into the big velvet couch with its many loose pillows, and stared out the windows into the garden, which was flooded with the morning sun.

The sun was coming in the windows, actually, and making the floor amber and beautiful to look at right before the side porch.

The phone had stopped. Surely one of the new staff around here had answered it—Cullen, the new driver, or Yancy, the young boy about the house who was always up, they said, by 6:00 a.m. Or maybe even old Eugenia, who stared so solemnly at Mona now, every time their paths crossed.

Mona had fallen asleep here last night, in her new silk dress, right on the very couch of sin where she and Michael had done it together, and though she had tried her best to dream of Yuri—Yuri, who had called, leaving a message with Celia that indeed he was all right, and he would be in touch very soon with all of them—she had found herself thinking about Michael, thinking about those three tumbles, and how they’d been, very forbidden and perhaps the best erotic fling she’d scored so far.

It was not that Yuri had not been marvelous, the lover of her dreams. But the two had been so careful with each other; it had been lovemaking, yes, but in the safest way imaginable. And it had left Mona wishing that she had been more forthcoming on that last night about her usual rampant desires.

Rampant. She really loved that word. It suited her. “You are running rampant.” That was the kind of thing Celia or Lily would say to her. And she would say, “I treasure the compliment, but I do get the point.”

God, if only she’d talked to Yuri herself. Celia had told him to call First Street. Why hadn’t he done it? She’d never know.

Even Uncle Ryan had been irritated. “We need to talk to this man. We need to talk to him about Aaron.”

And that was the really sad part, that it was Celia who’d told Yuri, and maybe nobody else in the world knew what Aaron had meant to Yuri, except Mona, in whom he’d confided, preferring to talk than to make love on their one and only stolen night. Where was he now? How was he? In those few hours of passionate exchange, he’d proven intensely emotional, black eyes glittering as he’d told her in stripped-down language—the very beautiful English of those for whom it is a second tongue—the key events of his tragic but amazingly successful life.

“You just can’t tell a gypsy something like that, that his oldest friend’s been run over by some maniac.”