The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,314

breast. ‘He won’t stop us,’ she said. ‘Please trust me that he won’t.’

“At this moment, Pierce returned, pushing open the door once more and letting in the great cacophony from outside. She took the glass of champagne from him gratefully and drank down half of it.

“ ‘I’ll talk to you in a few minutes,’ she said to me with deliberate sweetness. ‘In just a few minutes. You’ll be right here, won’t you? No, as a matter of fact, why don’t you get some air? Go out on the front porch, ducky, and I’ll come talk to you there.’

“Pierce knew she was up to something. He looked from her to me, but obviously he felt quite helpless. She took him by the arm and led him out with her ahead of me. I glanced down at the carpet. The twenty-dollar bills had fallen and were scattered everywhere. Hastily, I gathered them up, put them back into the drawer, and went into the hall.

“Just opposite the library door, I caught a glimpse of a portrait of Julien Mayfair, a very well-done canvas in heavy dark Rembrandt-style oils. I wished I had time to examine it.

“But I hurried around the back of the staircase and started pushing and shoving as gently as I could towards the front door.

“Three minutes must have passed, and I had made it only so far as the newel post, when I saw him again, or thought I did for one terrible instant—the brown-haired man I had seen in the mirror. This time he was gazing at me over someone’s shoulder, as he stood in the front corner of the hall.

“I tried to pick him out again. But I couldn’t. People crushed against me as if they were deliberately trying to block me, but of course they weren’t.

“Then I realized someone ahead of me was pointing to the stairs. I was now past it, and within only a few feet of the door. I turned round, and saw a child on the stairway, a very pretty little blond-haired girl. No doubt it was Antha, though she looked rather small for eight years. She was dressed in a flannel nightgown and barefoot, and she was crying, and looking over the railing into the doors of the front room.

“I too turned and looked into the front room, at which point someone gasped aloud, and the crowd parted, people falling to the left and the right of the door, in apparent fear. A red-haired man stood in the doorway, slightly to my left, facing into the room. And as I watched with sickening horror, he lifted a pistol with his right hand and fired it. The deafening report shook the house. Panic ensued. The air was filled with screams. Someone had fallen by the front door, and the others simply ran over the poor devil. People were struggling to escape back through the hall.

“I saw Stella lying on the floor in the middle of the front room. She was on her back, with her head turned to the side, staring towards the hall. I raced forward, but not in time to stop the red-haired man from standing over her and firing the pistol again. Her body convulsed as blood exploded from the side of her head.

“I grabbed for the bastard’s arm, and he fired again as my hand tightened on his wrist. But this bullet missed her and went through the floor. It seemed the screams were redoubled. Glass was breaking. Indeed, the windows were shattering. Someone attempted to grab the man from behind, and I managed somehow to get the gun away from him, though I was accidentally stepping on Stella, indeed, tripping over her feet.

“I fell to my knees with the gun, and then pushed it quite deliberately away across the floor. The murderer was struggling vainly against a half-dozen men now. Glass from the windows blew inward all over us; I saw it rain down upon Stella. Blood was running down her neck, and over the Mayfair emerald which lay askew on her breast.

“Next thing I knew a monstrous clap of thunder obliterated the deafening screams and shrieks still coming from all quarters. And I felt the rain gusting in; then I heard it coming down on the porches all around, and then the lights went out.

“In repeated flashes of lightning I saw the men dragging the murderer from the room. A woman knelt at Stella’s side, and lifted her lifeless wrist, and then let out an agonizing scream.

“As