Blackwood Farm (60 page)

“She had her face buried in her hands, and her hands were stained with blood.

“ ‘I'm sorry,' I said.

“She took her handkerchief out and wiped her face and her hands. Then she looked up at me, prettily.

“ ‘Why should you be sorry?' she asked. ‘It's only natural for you to hate a creature like me. Why shouldn't you?'

“ ‘How so?' I asked. I expected her at any moment to fly at me again.

“ ‘Who should be made into creatures like us?' she asked. ‘The wounded, the slave, the destitute, the dying. But you were a prince, a mortal prince. And I didn't think twice about it.'

“ ‘That's true,' I said.

“ ‘And so you . . . you fool the fools?' she asked gesturing with her right hand in a roving motion. ‘You live with your mortals lovingly around you?'

“ ‘Yes, for now,' I said.

“ ‘Don't be tempted to bring them over,' she said.

“ ‘I'm not tempted,' I said. ‘I'd rather go straight to Hell than do it that way.'

“She looked at the diamonds. I didn't know what to do about them. I looked around. I had gotten them all. She picked up the strands and put them in one of her pockets. Her hair was mussed. I took out my comb. I gestured, Would she let me comb it? She said Yes, and so I did it. Her hair was thick and silky.

“Finally she stood up to go. She took me in her arms and she kissed me.

“ ‘Don't run afoul of the Vampire Lestat,' she said. ‘He won't think twice about burning you to a cinder. And then I'd have to fight him and I'm not strong enough.'

“ ‘That's really true?'

“ ‘I told you in Napoli to read the books,' she said. ‘He's drunk the blood of the Mother. He lay in the sands of the Gobi Desert for three days. Nothing can kill him. It wouldn't even be fun to fight him. But just stay out of New Orleans and you don't need to worry about him. There's something ignoble about one as powerful as Lestat picking on one as young as you. He won't come here to do it.'

“ ‘Thank you,' I said.

“She walked towards the door as though she was making a graceful exit. I didn't know whether or not she knew there was blood on her clothing. I didn't know whether or not to tell her. Finally I did.

“ ‘On your suit,' I said, ‘blood.'

“ ‘You just can't resist white clothes, can you?' she asked, but she didn't seem angry. ‘Let me ask you something. And answer me truthfully or not at all. Why did you leave us?'

“I thought for a long moment. Then I said, ‘I wanted to be with my aunt. I had no real choice in the matter. And there were others. You know this already.'

“ ‘But weren't we interesting to you?' she asked. ‘After all, you might have asked me to bring you home now and then. Surely you know my powers are very great.'

“I shook my head.

“ ‘I don't blame you for turning your back on me,' she said, ‘but to turn your back on one as wise as Arion? That seems rash to me.'

“ ‘You're probably right, but for now I have to be here. Then later perhaps I can bring my suit to Arion.'

“She smiled. She shrugged. ‘Very well. I leave you the Hermitage, my boy,' she said. And she was gone just as if she had vanished. And so our one brief visit ended.

“And so my story is at an end.”

44

I SAT THERE
in silence. We had perhaps two hours before dawn, and I felt that all my life was pressed against my heart, and, though I was a sinner, I had not sinned in holding anything back. It was all laid out before me. I wondered if Goblin was near me in any form. I wondered whether or not he could have been listening.

Lestat, who had been quiet this whole time, waited for a long moment in silence. Then he spoke up.

“Your epilogue was very thorough, but you haven't mentioned one person. What has become of Mona Mayfair?”

I winced.

“I have never received another E-mail or phone call from Mona, and for that I thank God. However, periodically Michael or Rowan will call. I find myself trembling as I listen. Will these powerful witches pick up something from the timbre of my voice? But it doesn't seem so. They tell me the latest. Mona is in isolation. Mona is on dialysis. Mona is not in any pain.

“About six months ago, maybe more, I received a typewritten letter from Rowan, written on behalf of Mona, explaining that Mona had had a hysterectomy, and that Mona wanted me to know. ‘Beloved Abelard, I release you from any and all promises,' Mona had dictated to Rowan. They had hoped the operation would help Mona, but it hadn't. Mona needed dialysis more and more often. There were still medications they could try.

“My answer was to raid every flower shop in New Orleans, sending sprays and baskets and vases of flowers with notes that pledged my undying love, notes which I could dictate over the phone. I didn't dare to send anything touched by my own hands. Mona could lay her hands on such a note and sense the evil in me. Just couldn't take such a risk.

“As it stands now, I still send the flowers almost daily. Now and then I break down and call. It's always the same. Mona can't see anyone just now. Mona is holding her own.

“I think I actually dread the moment when they might say, ‘Come see her.' I'm afraid I won't be able to resist it and I won't be able to fool Mona, and in those precious moments, perhaps our last precious moments, Mona's mind will be clouded with some dim fear of what I've become. At the very least I'll seem cold and passionless though my heart's breaking. I dread it. I dread it with my whole soul.

“But more than anything I dread the final call—the message that Mona has lost the fight, the word that Mona is gone.”

Lestat nodded. He leaned on his elbow, his hair somewhat mussed, his large blue eyes looking at me compassionately as they had throughout the long hours of my storytelling.

“What do you think is the point of the tale you've told?” he asked. “Aside from the fact that we must protect Aunt Queen from all harmful knowledge of what's happened to you, and we must destroy Goblin?”

“That I had a rich life,” I said. “As Petronia herself said it. And she didn't care about that life. She took it capriciously and viciously.”

Again he nodded. “But Quinn, immortality, no matter how one comes by it, is a gift, and you must lose your hatred of her. It poisons you.”

“It's like my hatred of Patsy,” I said quietly. “I need to lose my hatred of both of them. I need to lose all hatred, but right now it's Goblin who needs destroying, and I've tried, out of fairness to him, to make it plain to you how much I'm responsible for what he is, and even for the vengeance he wishes on me.”

“That's clear,” said Lestat, “but I don't know that I alone can help stop him. I may need help. In fact, I think I do. I think I need it from a Blood Drinker whose prowess with spirits is a legend.” He raked his hair back from his forehead. “I think I can persuade her to come and help me with this. I'm speaking of Merrick Mayfair. She doesn't know your fair Mona, at least not as far as I know, and even if she did at one time there's no connection now in any event. But Merrick knows spirits in a way that most vampires don't. She was a powerful witch before she ever became a vampire.”

“Then the Dark Blood didn't take away her powers with spirits?” I asked.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “She's far too complex for that. And besides, it's a lie that spirits shun us. As you said yourself, I'm a seer of spirits. I wish to God I weren't. I'll need tomorrow evening to find Merrick Mayfair. Merrick is almost as young in the Blood as you are. She's suffering. But I think I can bring her here, perhaps at one or two in the morning. I can't imagine her refusing to come, but we'll see. In either case, I'll return. You have my firm pledge on it.”

“Ah, I thank you with all my heart,” I said.

“Then let me make a little confession,” he said with a warm, irresistible smile.

“Of course,” I said, “what is it?”

“I've fallen in love with you,” he said in a low voice. “You might find that in the nights to come I'm a bit of a nuisance.”

I was so amazed I was speechless. To say that he looked exquisite to me was an understatement. He was savory and elegant and all night as I had talked I had been so locked to him that I had felt myself under his spell, opening up, as if there were no boundary between us.

“Good,” he said suddenly as though he was reading my mind. “Now perhaps I'll leave you early so that I can try to find Merrick right away. We have some time left before morning—.”

A loud scream suddenly interrupted both of us. It was Jasmine, and I heard another scream right after it.

“Quinn, Quinn, it's Goblin!” she was roaring from the foot of the stairs.

I had to hold myself back and force myself to run like a mortal man as I descended with Lestat behind me.

Screams came from Aunt Queen's room. I could hear Cindy, the nurse, crying. Big Ramona was sobbing. Jasmine rushed towards me. She grabbed me by both arms and said:

“It was Goblin, Quinn! I saw him!”

We ran back through the hall together, I once again suppressing my speed, trying desperately to keep to a mortal pace.

As soon as I saw Aunt Queen lying on the floor by the marble table I knew she was dead.

I knew by her eyes.

I didn't have to see the blood streaming from her head, or the blood on the marble table. I knew, and when I looked at her bare stocking feet, when I looked at her humble stocking feet, I began to sob, covering my face with my handkerchief.

And there was the beautiful cameo of Medusa at her throat, the charm against harm, and it had done her no good, it hadn't saved her. She was dead; she was lost. She was gone.

She and her majesty and her goodness were gone forever.

What else was there? People were making frantic phone calls. Sirens were soon screaming. What did it matter?

How many times did they explain it before dawn?

She had taken off her treacherous shoes. That's why no one was holding her arm. She had taken off her terrible shoes. That's why Jasmine didn't have her by the arm. She had taken off her dangerous shoes. That's why Cindy wasn't at her side. She had gone over to the table to look at her cameos. She had wanted to find one in particular for Cindy's daughter.

On and on they said it, and the Coroner listened and Sheriff Jeanfreau listened and Ugly Henderson listened, and Jasmine and Cindy both said it had been Goblin who made her fall, it had been Goblin whirling in the air, Goblin like a small tornado in the room, and Aunt Queen had cried out twice “Goblin!” and thrown up her arms, and then gone down, her head crashing into the marble.

Cindy and Jasmine had seen it! They had seen the commotion in the air! They knew what it was. They heard her say it twice: “Goblin, Goblin!” and in her stocking feet on the carpet she fell, she fell and hit the marble table with the side of her head, and she was dead before she reached the carpet.

Oh, God in Heaven help me.

“Now, are you two ladies telling me that a ghost killed Mrs. McQueen?” asked the Coroner.

“Sheriff, for the love of Heaven,” I said. “She fell! Surely you don't believe that either Cindy or Jasmine had anything to do with it!”

And so on it went, round and round, until I had to go, and I took Jasmine aside and told her to make all the arrangements with Lonigan and Sons in New Orleans. The wake should be tomorrow night, starting at seven. And I would see her then, and I told her to try as she might to arrange for an evening interment. Of course that would be highly irregular but maybe money could manage it.

“And for the love of Heaven,” I said, “beware of Goblin.”

“What are you going to do about him, Quinn?” she asked. She was trembling and her face was puffy from crying.

“I'm going to destroy him, Jasmine. But it will take just a little time. Until I can get it done, beware of him. Tell all the others. Beware of him. He's swollen with power—.”

“You can't leave here now, Quinn,” she said.

“I have to, Jasmine,” I said. “I'll see you at the funeral parlor in New Orleans at seven tomorrow.”

She was horrified, and I didn't blame her.

Lestat stepped in front of me and he gently took her by the shoulders, looking intently into her eyes. “Jasmine,” he said in a low tone, “we have to go and find the woman who can put an end to Goblin. It's imperative that we do that. Do you understand?”

She nodded. She was still crying and she licked the tears from her lips as they fell. But she couldn't take her eyes off his.

“Keep little Jerome close to you,” said Lestat, his voice soft and persuasive. “This creature wants to hurt everyone dear to Quinn. See that everybody is on guard.”

He kissed her forehead.

Quietly, we withdrew.

At last, Lestat and I were alone on Sugar Devil Island and I gave vent to my grief, sobbing like a child. “I can't imagine the world without her, I don't want the world without her, I hate him with my whole soul that he did it, how in the name of God did he get the power, she was too old, too fragile, how can we make him suffer, how can we make him suffer so much that he'll want to die, how can we send him to whatever Hell exists for him?”

On and on I raved. And then we went to our rest together.

45

AT SUNSET
I rose hungry and miserable, but I understood that Lestat had to leave me to my mortal commitments so that he could contact Merrick Mayfair and see if she would render me support.

As soon as I reached the big house I realized that Nash and Tommy were both there. Tommy had flown all day and some of the evening to get home from England, and Nash had just arrived much earlier from the West Coast. The look of grief on both their faces was dreadful, and I could scarcely hold back my tears.

In truth, I didn't want to hold them back but the fear of the blood made it absolutely essential, so I gave myself up to hugs and kisses and saw to it that I had at least three linen handkerchiefs, and, saying next to nothing, for what was there to say, we all piled into Aunt Queen's luxurious limousine and headed into New Orleans for Lonigan and Sons in the Irish Channel—back to the turf where Manfred Blackwood had owned his first saloon.

The crowd at the wake was already enormous when we arrived. Patsy was at the open door and very soberly dressed in black—which amazed me, as she was a great one for skipping funerals—and it was plain that she'd been crying.

She flashed a small square of folded pages at me.

“Photocopy of her will,” she said in a tremulous voice. “She instructed Grady a long time ago not to keep us in suspense. She left me plenty. It was a damn nice thing for her to do. He has a copy in his pocket for you.”

I merely nodded. It was all too typical of Aunt Queen to have done this last little generous gesture, and over the evening I was to see Grady passing the little folded photocopy packets to Terry Sue and Nash, among others.

Patsy went on out to smoke a cigarette and didn't seem to want to talk.

Jasmine, lovely in her blue suit and signature white blouse, and lamentably exhausted from the long day of picking out the coffin, the vault and the dress for Aunt Queen, was near to collapse.

“I brought her fingernail polish,” she repeated to me three times. “They did a nice job. I told them to wipe off some of the rouge, but it was nice. A nice job. You want to bury her with the pearls? Those are her pearls.” Over and over she asked.

I said Yes.

Nash finally collected Jasmine and escorted her to one of the many little French chairs that lined the walls of the front parlor. Big Ramona was sitting in a chair simply crying, and Clem, having parked the limo, came in to stand over his mother and looked perfectly wretched.

Terry Sue was crying too as she held on to Tommy, who was sobbing. I wanted to comfort Tommy but I was so rattled by my own grief, and, holding back the blood tears, I couldn't do it. Brittany was white-faced and miserable.

Rowan Mayfair was there, which amazed me, looking softly delicate in her tailored suit with her carefully bobbed hair flattering her high cheekbones as always, and there was Michael Curry at her side, with a little more gray in his curly hair than I remembered, the two of them sharing a common radiance which alarmed me. Witches, yes. The Blood told me and they both nodded respectfully at me, suspecting nothing, and I veered away from them, wary of their power, with only a nod, as if I was too stricken to talk, which in fact was true.

There was no avoiding it: I had to approach the coffin. I had to look into it. I had to do it. And so I did.

There lay Aunt Queen in satin splendor, with ropes of pearls on her breast and a large rectangular cameo at her throat which I had never seen in her collection, and which for the moment I couldn't place. Then I recalled it. I had seen it on Petronia. Petronia had worn it when last I saw her at the Hermitage. And when last I saw her in Naples.

How did it get here? I had only to look up to see. There stood Petronia at the foot of the coffin, dressed all in dark blue with her glorious hair pulled back, looking sad and forlorn. In a swift motion that seemed no more than a blink of my eye she was beside me, and, curling her fingers gently around my upper arm, she whispered into my ear that Jasmine had allowed her to place the cameo on Aunt Queen and she had done it, and if I would allow it, it should remain.

“That way, you can keep her special treasures,” she said, “yet know she was buried with something worthy of her, something she would have admired.”

“Very well and good,” I said. Then Petronia was gone. I knew it without looking. I felt it. I felt it and I felt a strangeness at having seen her among so many mortals, and I felt a new confidence in my own abilities to dissemble, but more than anything I felt an overwhelming misery as I looked down at my beloved Aunt Queen.

Lonigan was an undertaker par excellence as everybody knew, but he had really outdone himself in capturing the pleasant, almost gay expression of Aunt Queen. She was almost smiling. And her gray hair was in perfect soft curls around her face. The rouge on her cheeks was subtle and the coral lipstick on her lips was perfect. She would have been most happy with all that had been done. Of course Jasmine had helped. But Lonigan had wrought the masterpiece, and Aunt Queen's generosity shone forth from his work.

As to the salmon-colored dress and the pearls which Jasmine had chosen, they were lovely, and the rosary in Aunt Queen's hands—it was the crystal rosary from her First Communion, which she had carried with her all through the great world.

I was so stricken with anguish that I couldn't move or speak. In desperation I wished that Petronia had lingered, and I found myself staring at the large rectangular cameo, with its little mythological figures—Hebe, Zeus, the raised cup—and the blood tears started to fill my eyes. I wiped furiously with the linen handkerchief.

Then quickly I withdrew. I went hurriedly through the crowded parlors and out into the hot evening and stood alone at the curb of the corner, looking up at the stars. Nothing would ever assuage the grief I felt now. I knew it. I would carry it with me all my nights until whatever I was now had disintegrated, until Quinn Blackwood had become somebody or something other than what he was now.

My time of privacy lasted only a few seconds. Jasmine came to me and told me that many people wanted to express their condolences and were hesitant because I seemed so upset.

“I can't talk to them, Jasmine, you have to do it for me,” I told her. “I have to go now. I know it seems hard and I seem the coward to you. But it's what I have to do.”

“Is it Goblin?” she asked.

“It's the fear of him, yes,” I said, lying just a little, more to console her than to cover my own shame. “When is the Mass? When is the interment?”

“The Mass is at eight p.m. tomorrow at St. Mary's, and then we go to Metairie Cemetery.”

I kissed her. I told her I would see her at the church, and then I turned to go.

But as I glanced back at the crowd leaking out of the doorways onto the street, I saw yet another figure who astonished me—the figure of Julien Mayfair, in his fine gray suit, the suit he had worn the day he so regally entertained me with hot cocoa, standing as if he was merely taking the warm air with all the others, his eyes fixed casually on me.

He seemed as solid as every other person present, except that he was a faintly different color than everyone else, as though he had been painted in by another artist, and all the tones of his clothes and skin and hair were done in darker hues. Oh, such a fine and elegant ghost, come from who knows where, and who in the world thought that as a Blood Drinker I wouldn't see my spirits?

“Ah, yes, she was your daughter, of course,” I said, and though there was a great distance between us, and Jasmine was looking up at me uncomprehending, he nodded and he made a very sad little smile.

“What are you saying, you crazy Little Boss?” said Jasmine. “You punchy as I am?”

“I don't know, darling,” I answered. “I just see things, always have. Seems the living and the dead have turned out for Aunt Queen. Don't expect me to explain it. But it's fitting, all things considered, don't you think?”

As I watched him, Julien's expression gradually changed, sharpening and strengthening and then becoming almost bitter. I felt the chills coming up my neck. He shook his head in a subtle but stern negation. I felt the words coming from him soundlessly over the distance.
Never my beloved Mona.

I drew in my breath. A flood of assurances came from that part of me which could reach him without words.

“Come around, Little Boss,” said Jasmine. I felt her lips on my cheek and the hard press of her vigilant fingers.

I couldn't take my eyes off Julien, but his face was softening. It went blank.

He began to fade. And then dissolve just as Rowan and Michael, along with Dr. Winn Mayfair, came out of the nearest doorway. And who should be with them now but Stirling Oliver, Stirling who knew what I was, Stirling whom I had almost killed the night before, Stirling—gazing at me as if he accepted me when that was utterly morally impossible, Stirling whom I had so loved as my friend. I couldn't bear their scrutiny—any of them. I couldn't talk common talk of Mona, as if my soul didn't hunger for her, as if I didn't know that I could never see her again, even if they thought that I could, as if Julien's ghost hadn't just threatened me. I had to make a hasty exit.

And I did.

It was a night for a special killing. I pounded the hot pavements. I left the great trees of the Garden District behind me. I crossed the Avenue. I knew where to go.

I wanted a drug dealer, a wanton killer, a fine repast, and I knew where to find one; I had passed his door on gentler nights. I knew his habits. I had saved him for a time of vengeance. I had saved him for now.

It was a big two-story house on Carondolet Street, shabby to the world and rich inside with his electronic gadgets and wall-to-wall carpets, a padded cell from which he ordered executions and purchases and even put the mark on children who refused to run deliveries for him, having their tennis shoes tied together and thrown up over the electric wires to let others know that they had been killed.

I didn't care what the world thought; I broke in on him and slaughtered his two drugged-up stumbling companions with rapid blows to the head. He scrambled for his gun. I had him by the throat, broke him open like a stem. At once I had the sweet sap of his monstrous self-love, poison plant in the garden of hate, lifting his symbolic fist against any assassin, believing to the last drop of blood that he would triumph, that somehow consciousness wouldn't betray him, until finally he was just spilling out the child soul, the early prayers, the images of mother and kindergarten, sunshine, and his heart stopped, and I drew back, licking my lips, glutted, angry, full.

I took his gun, the gun he had reached for to shoot me, and, taking the pillow from off his couch, I pressed pillow and gun to his head and put two bullets in him, and then I did the same to each of his companions. That would give the Coroner something he could understand. I wiped off the gun and left it there.

In a flash I saw Goblin, eyes full of blood, hands red with blood, then he shot towards me as if to grab my throat.

Burn, you devil, burn!
I sent the fire into him as he surrounded me, as he sought to merge with me, and I felt the heat singe me, singe my hair, my clothes.
You murdered Aunt Queen, you devil, burn! Burn if I have to burn with you.
I fell to the floor, or rather the floor came up to take me, full of dust and filth, and I was sprawled out flat on the stinking carpet with him inside me, his heart thudding against my heart, and then the swoon—we were children, we were infants, we were in the cradle and someone was singing, and Little Ida said, Doesn't that baby have the most beautiful curly hair, oh so sweet to be with Little Ida, to hear her voice again, so sweet, so safe. Aunt Queen let the screen door bang behind her. “Ida, you darling, help me with this clasp. I swear I'm going to lose these pearls!”
You devil, you murdering spirit, I won't look at her, I won't feel it; I won't know it.
And I was with Goblin and loved Goblin and nothing else mattered—not even the tiny wounds all over me and the tug on my heart. “Get off me, you devil! I swear it, I'll put an end to you. I'll take you into the fire with me. Don't count me a liar!”

I rose to my hands and knees.

A gust of wind wrapped itself around me and then swept past the broken door. The panes of glass in the window shattered and clattered.

I was so full of hate I could taste it and it didn't taste like blood.

He was gone.

I was in the lair of the drug king, amid the rotting bodies. I had to get out.

And Aunt Queen was dead. She was absolutely dead. She was laid out on cream-colored satin with ropes of pearls. Someone remembered her little eyeglasses with their sterling silver chain. And her Chantilly perfume. Just a little Chantilly perfume.

She is dead.

And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that I can do about it.