31

THIS BOOK'S FINISHED. You know it. I know it. After all, what more is there to say? So why am I still writing? Read on and find out.

How many nights passed? I don't know. I don't count well. I get numbers and ages wrong. But I feel time. I feel it the way I feel the evening air when I walk outside, the way I feel the roots of the oak tree under my foot.

Nothing could have made me leave Blackwood Farm. So long as I was on the property, I was safe. I even put off Stirling for a while. Just can't talk about the Taltos now, though it is a most interesting subject, of course, but you see, she's wrapped up in it, she's at the core of it-.

So when I wasn't reading "Little Nell" or David Copperfield, I went walking on the property, down along the swamp where I'd encountered Patsy, or through the little cemetery, or over the broad lawns to admire the flower beds that were still tended so faithfully even though Pops, the man who planted them all, is gone.

I had no predictable path, but I did have a predictable time. I usually went out about three hours before dawn.

If I had a favorite place it was the cemetery. All those nameless graves, and the four oaks that surrounded it, and the swamp so perilously close.

They'd cleaned away all the soot from the grave on which Merrick Mayfair had built her pyre. One would never know there had been such a blaze there. And the leaves were raked regularly, and the little chapel, quite a building, was swept clean every day.

It had no real door; its windows had no glass. It was a Gothic piece of work, all pointed arches. And inside there was a bench where one could sit and meditate.

But that wasn't my favorite spot.

My favorite spot was to sit at the foot of the biggest of the oak trees, the one that had a limb that lay on the ground above the cemetery, a limb that stretched into the swamp.

I headed there with my head down. I wasn't thinking of much of anything, except perhaps that I had seldom been this happy or this miserable in my life. I didn't need blood but I wanted it. I craved it unbearably at times. Especially on these walks. I dreamt of the prowl and of the murder. I dreamt of the soiled intimacy-the needle of my hunger plunged into heated hatefulness. But I didn't have the stamina for it just now.

The boundaries of Blackwood Farm were the boundaries of my soul.

I headed to my oak. I was going to sit there and look over the cemetery, look at the little iron lace fence with its ornate pickets, look at the graves, and the rising hulk of the chapel. And who knows? Maybe there would be a mist coming off the swamp. And the sky would turn the familiar and oh, so essential, purple before the sun came.

That was my intent.

I live in the past, the present, the future. And I was remembering that once, very near here, under the other oak tree, the one closer to the gate of the cemetery, I had met Quinn, all alone, after he had killed Patsy, and I had given him my blood to drink.

I've never in all my long wandering years been hated by anyone the way Quinn was hated by Patsy. Patsy had attached to him all the hate her soul could tender. Who can judge such a thing? Ah. My own mother, given the Blood by me, is simply uninterested in me, and more or less always was. A very different thing from hate. But what was I going to say?

Yes. That I had met Quinn, and I had given him to drink my own blood. An intimate moment. A sad and thrilling moment. And a conveying of power from me to Quinn. He'd belonged to me in that little while. I had seen his complex and trusting soul and how the Dark Trick had stolen it, and how there had emerged from the theft a bold and unyielding survivor of Quinn Blackwood, determined to make sense of what had occurred.

Our irrepressible creative power.

I loved him. Sweet, easy. No kindling of possessiveness or fierce want. No concomitant emptiness. And then to witness his fulfillment in Mona, that was finer than blood lust.

I thought of that as I approached my oak tree, as I was dreaming, and weaving into my dreams bits of poetry, poetry I stole and broke and wove into my desires: You have ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse . . . how fair is my love. Can I not envision? Can I not dream? Set me as a seal upon thine heart.

What is it to me that I catch the scent of a mortal? Blackwood Farm is a citadel of mortals. What does it matter to anyone that Lestat is walking, whom they've all made so welcome? So one of them now comes to cross my path. I close my mind. My mind collapses in upon itself and its poetry: Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee.

I found my tree and my hand found the trunk of it.

She was sitting there, sitting on the thick roots, looking up at me. Her white coat was spattered with dried blood, her name tag askew, her face drawn, her eyes huge and hungry. She rose up into my waiting arms.

I held her, this supple, feverish creature, and my soul opened. "Love you, love you as I've never loved, love you above wisdom, above courage, above the glamor of evil, above all riches and the Blood itself, love you with my humble heart which I never knew I had, my gray-eyed one, my brilliant one, my mystic of the medical magic, my dreaming one, oh, let me just surround you with my arms, I don't dare to kiss you, I don't dare-."

She rose on tiptoe and pushed her tongue between my lips. Want you, want you with my whole soul. Do you hear me, do you know what gulf I've crossed to come to you? There is no god in my soul but you. I've belonged to greedy spirits, I've belonged to monsters made of my own flesh, I've belonged to ideas and formulae and dreams and designs of magnificence, but now I belong to you, I'm yours.

We lay down on the grass together, on the slope above the cemetery, under the canopy of the oak tree where the stars couldn't see us.

My hands wanted all of her, her flesh beneath the stiff cotton, the small full curve of her hips, her breasts, her pale neck, her lips, her privy parts, so wet and ready for my fingers, my lips grazing her throat, not daring to do more than feel the blood beneath the skin as my fingers brought her up to the climax, as she moaned against me, as her limbs went stiff with the finish, as she lay limp against my chest.

The blood thudded in my ears. It raced through my brain. It said I want her. But I lay still.

My lips were pressed to her forehead. The blood threaded through me turned to pain. The pain peaked, as her passion had peaked. And in the softness of her cheek and her lips, I knew a measure of sweetness and quiet, and the morning was still dark and the stars fought to flicker in the canopy of leaves above.

Her hand moved over my shoulder, over my chest.

"You know what I want of you," she said in that deep lustrous voice, her words underscored with pain and determination. "I want it from you, and I want you. I've told myself all the noble reasons to turn away from it, I've told myself all the moral arguments, my mind has been a confessional, a pulpit, a place beneath the porch where the philosophers gather. My mind has been a forum. In the emergency room I worked day after day until I could hardly stand any longer. Lorkyn's learned from me and me from Lorkyn, and programs of study have been designed for Oberon and Miravelle, and we have talked the nights through with formulations and proposals in which they are enshrined and encapsulated, and their collective well-being has been institutionalized, and good will surrounds them and stimulates them-and my soul, my soul has remained steadfast. My soul craves this miracle! My soul craves your face, you! My soul has been always with you." She sighed. "My love. . . ."

Silence. The songs of the swamp. The songs of those birds who always begin before morning. And the sound of the water moving, and the leaves all around us listing to a faint and uncertain breeze.

"This is something I never expected to feel again," she whispered. "I thought it would never come to me again," I felt her trembling. "That those parts of me had been forever burnt out," she said. "Yes, I love Michael and will forever, but what that love demands of me is that I set Michael free. Michael languishes in my shadow. Michael wants and should possess a simple woman who can bear him a wholesome child. And we've lived together in mourning for what might have been had monsters not possessed us and ruined us. We've whispered our Requiems for too long.

"And then this fire is born. Oh, not because of what you are! What you are could terrify. What you are could repel! But because of who you are, the soul inside you, the words you speak, the expression on your face, the certain witness of eternity I read in you! My world collapses when I'm near you. My values, my ambitions, my plans, my dreams. I see them as the scaffolding of hysteria. And this love has taken root, this savage love which knows no fear of you, and only wants to be with you, wants the Blood, yes, because it's your blood, and all else melts away."

I waited. I listened to the rhythm of her heart. I listened to the blood inside her. I listened to her sweet breath. I held myself back-the raging animal that had so many times shattered the cage and taken the object of its desire. I wrapped her so close!

For an age it seemed I held her.

Then I found myself letting her go, folding her limbs against her own breast, and rising and leaving her, refusing her outstretched hands, refusing them with kisses, but leaving her and walking to the edge of the swamp alone, my body growing cold, so cold it was as if some northern winter had found me in the gentle heat and driven its teeth into me.

I stood alone, so very alone, looking into the gnawing unformed morass of the swamp, and thinking only of her and letting my imagination run rampant with the undisciplined glory of loving her, of having her. The world reborn in love, and common things overlayered with common despair leapt into colors brilliant

and irresistible. What was this point in time to me? What was this place called Blackwood Farm that I couldn't take her with me and shake its dust from off my feet and soar with her to other lands of certain enchantment?

Oh yes, and what has this to do with pure love, Lestat? What is the luster of pure love? What is the luster of that most uncommon one who lies there waiting?

I don't know how long I stood there, apart from her. My rosy dreams of palaces, of wanderings, of bowers and realms of love were vaporous and great and small and vanishing.

And she was there, patient, wise-condemned by her own lips, wasn't she?

A sadness came to me, as pure as pure love, and then a pain, a pain as true as the pain I'd heard in her unhurried voice, her deep and total commitment.

At last I turned and I made my way back to her.

I lay beside her. Her arms were waiting for me. Her lips were waiting.

"And you believe this can happen?" I asked, speaking slowly. "You believe you can walk away from everyone who looks to you for a future they couldn't envisage without you?"

She said nothing. Then, "Let me fall into eternity," she sighed. "I am tired."

Oh, I understand, I do, and you have done so much!

I waited, then I spoke with careful words.

"You believe the ongoing world will know what to make of Lorkyn and Oberon and Miravelle without your wisdom and your insight?" I asked. "You believe that ego-driven science can truly take custody of something so delicate, so explosive, so fine?"

No answer.

"You believe the Medical Center will reach its full perfection without your guidance?" I asked. I spoke the words as lovingly as I could. "There are plans yet in your heart, magnificent plans, and bold visions yet uncommitted to record. Who will pick up the scepter? Who has the courage? Who has the Mayfair billions coupled with the discrete power? Who passes from the operating table to the laboratory to the swarm of the architects and the scientists with the fierceness of a Gamma Knife? Who? Who can go beyond the daring already accomplished in the Medical Center? Who can double its size? Perhaps even triple it? And you have those years to give it. You know it. I know it. You have them chaste and pure and driven by compulsive virtue. Are you ready to turn your back on that?"

No response. I waited. I held her close, as if someone were going to steal her from me. As if the night was full of menace. As if the menace didn't come from me.

"And Michael," I said. "Yes, he has to be released, but is this the time to do it? Will he survive your coming to me? He's still snared in horrors. His heart's been broken by Mona's fate. Can you really slip away on Michael? Can you write the cryptic note? Can you say the dark farewell?"

For the longest time she didn't answer. I felt I could say no more. My heart ached as much as it had ever ached. We lay so near to one another, so bound in one another's limbs, so warm and belonging to each other that the night had gone quiet of all its random sounds for us.

At last she stirred ever so faintly, ever so tenderly.

"I know," she whispered. "I know." And then again, "I know."

"This can't happen," I said. "Never have I wanted anything so much, but it can't happen. You know that it can't."

"You don't really mean that," she said. "Surely you don't. You can't refuse me! You think I'd come to you like this if I didn't know how you really feel?"

"Know how I feel?" I said, holding her against me, clasping her tight to me. "Yes, you know how much I love you. Yes, you know how much I want you, and to slip away with you, away from anyone who could divide us, yes, you know. What are mortal lives to me after all? But don't you see, Rowan, you've made your mortal life magnificent. You turned your soul inside out to do it. And that simply cannot be ignored."

Her arms continued to hold me. She pressed her face against mine. I stroked her hair.

"Yes," she said. "I tried. It was my dream."

"It is your dream," I said. "Even now."

"Yes," she said.

I felt such hurt in me I couldn't speak for a little while.

Again, I let myself imagine we were in a dark bed, she and I together, and that nothing could part us, and in each other we had found sublime meaning, and all the cosmic troubles were gone from us like so many veils torn away.

But that was fantasy, and weak as it was beautiful.

She broke the silence.

"And so I make another sacrifice," she said, "or you make it for me, a sacrifice so great I hardly grasp it! Good God-."

"No," I answered. "You make the sacrifice, Rowan. You've come to the brink but you move back from it. You've got to go back, you, yourself."

Her fingers moved against my back, as though trying to find some human softness in it. Her head nestled against me. Her breath came choked as if in sobs.

"Rowan," I said. "It's not the time."

She looked up at me.

"The time will come," I said. "I'll wait and I'll be there."

"You mean this?" she asked.

"I mean it," I said. "You haven't lost what I have to give, Rowan. It's just not the time."

A soft mauve light had come into the sky; the leaves were burning in my eyes. I hated it.

Lifting her gently with me, I sat up and helped her to sit beside me. Bits of grass clung to her, and her hair was prettily disheveled and her eyes glistened in the growing light.

"Of course a thousand things may happen," I said. "We both know it. But I'll be watching. I'll be watching, and waiting. And when the time comes, when you can really draw back from all of it, then I'll come."

She looked down, and then up at me again. Her face was pensive and soft. "And will I lose all sight of you now?" she asked. "Will you go away beyond my reach?"

"From time to time, perhaps," I answered. "But never for very long. I'll be guarding you, Rowan. You can count on it. And the night will come when we'll share the Blood. I promise you. The Dark Gift will be yours."

I rose to my feet. I took her hand and helped her to stand.

"I have to go now, beloved. The light's my mortal enemy. I wish I could watch the sunrise with you. But I can't."

I clasped her to me suddenly, violently, kissing her as hungrily as I ever had. "I love you, Rowan Mayfair," I said. "I belong to you. I'll always belong to you. I'll never never be far away."

"Good-bye, my love," she whispered. A faint smile appeared on her face. "You really do love me, don't you?" she whispered.

"Oh, yes, with my whole heart," I said.

She turned from me quickly, as though that was the only way to do it, and she walked up the rise of the lawn and to the front drive. I heard the motor of her car, and then I went slowly back around to the rear door of the house, and into my room.

I was so utterly unhappy that I hardly knew what I was doing. And at one point it struck me that what I'd just done was mad. Then it hit me that it just couldn't have happened. A selfish fiend like me just would not have let her go!

Who said all those noble words!

She'd given me the moment, perhaps the only moment. And I'd tried to be Saint Lestat! I'd tried to be heroic. Dear God, what had I done! Now her wisdom and her strength would carry her far away from me. Age would only enlarge her soul and dwindle for her the glow of my enchantment. I had forfeited her forever. Oh, Lestat, how I do hate thee!

There was plenty enough time for the nightshirt ritual, and as I finished with it, torn with thirst and torn with grief for what I'd just refused and might lose forever, I realized I wasn't alone.

Ghosts again, I thought. Mon Dieu. I looked quite deliberately at the small table.

What a sight.

It was a grown woman, perhaps twenty, twenty-five. Glossy black hair in marcel waves. Flapper dress of layered silk, long string of pearls. Legs crossed, fancy heels.

Stella!

It seemed monstrous, like the little girl I knew stretched and pulled and blown up; cigarette in a holder, poised in her left hand.

"Ducky, don't be so silly!" she said. "Of course it's me! Oncle Julien's so frightened of you now, he won't come near you. But he just had to send the message: 'That was superb!' "

She vanished before I could throw one of my boots at her. But I wouldn't have done that anyway.

What did it matter? Let them come and go. After all, this was Blackwood Farm, wasn't it, and Blackwood Farm has always opened its portals to ghosts.

And now I lay me down to sleep, and the book comes to a close.

Against the deep down pillow, I realized something. Even in grief and loss, I possessed Rowan. She was a presence within me forever. My loneliness would never again be as bitter. Over the years she might drift away from me, she might come to condemn the point of passion that had brought her to my arms. She might be lost to me in some other mundane fashion that would wring tears from me all my nights.

But I'd never really lose her. Because I wouldn't lose the lesson of love I'd learned through her. And this she had given me as I had tried to give it to her.

And so the morning dew covered the grass on that day at Blackwood Farm like any other, and I dreamt before the sun rose that:

I wanna be a saint, I wanna save souls by the millions, I wanna look like an angel, but I don't wanna talk like a gangster, I don't want to do bad things even to bad guys, I wanna be Saint Juan Diego. . . .

. . . But you know me, and come sunset, maybe it will be time to hunt the back roads, and those little out- of-the-way beer joints, sure enough, smell the malt and the sawdust, and yeah, right on, dance to the Dixie Chicks on the jukebox, and maybe crush a couple of heavy-duty Evil Doers, guys who are just waiting for me, and when I'm flush with blood, and sick of the smack and roll of the pool balls and that warm light on the green felt, who knows, yeah, who knows just how glorious the firmament with all its breaking clouds and lost little stars will appear as I rise above this Earth and spread out my arms as though there was no want in me for anything warm or good.

Be gone from me, oh mortals who are pure of heart. Be gone from my thoughts, oh souls that dream great dreams. Be gone from me, all hymns of glory. I am the magnet for the damned. At least for a little while. And then my heart cries out, my heart will not be still, my heart will not give up, my heart will not give in-

-the blood that teaches life will not teach lies, and love becomes again my reprimand, my goad, my song.

THE END

Anne Rice October 5, 2002

New Orleans