The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,540

shall pass through. I want this too much, you see, for it to fail, and I am too patient, too cunning in my learning, and too strong.

“The knowledge is here now. The full explanation for the origin of material life is at hand. Replication is possible. Look back with me if you will to Marguerite’s bedroom on the night that I took her in the body of a dead man, and willed my hair to grow the color that I would have for myself. Look back on that experiment. It is closer in time to the painted savages who lived in caves and hunted with spears than it is to you in your hospital, and in your laboratory.

“It is your knowledge which sharpens your power. You understand the nucleus, and the protoplasm. You know what are chromosomes, what are genes, what is DNA.

“Julien was strong. Charlotte was strong. Petyr van Abel was a giant among men. And there is another kind of strength in you. A daring, and a hunger, and aloneness. And that hunger and aloneness I know, and I kiss with the lips I do not have; I hold with the arms I do not have; I press to the heart in me that isn’t there to beat with warmth.

“Stand off from me. Fear me. I wait. I will not hurt your precious Michael. But he cannot love you as I can, because he cannot know you as I know you.

“I know the insides of your body and your brain, Rowan. I would be made flesh, Rowan, fused with the flesh and superhuman in the flesh. And once this is done, what metamorphosis may be yours, Rowan? Think on what I say.

“I see this, Rowan. As I have always seen it—that the thirteenth would be the strength to open the door. What I cannot see is how to exist without your love.

“For I have loved you always, I have loved the part of you that existed in those before you. I have loved you in Petyr van Abel, who of all was most like you. I have loved you even in my sweet crippled Deirdre, powerless, dreaming of you.”

Silence.

For an hour there had been no sound, no vibrations in the air. Only the house again, with the winter cold outside it, crisp and windless and clean.

Eugenia was gone. The phone rang again in the emptiness.

She sat in the dining room, arms resting on the polished table, watching the bony crepe myrtle, scraping, leafless and shining, at the blue sky.

At last she stood up. She put on her red wool coat, and locked the door behind her, and went out the open gate and up the street.

The cold air felt good and cleansing. The leaves of the oaks had darkened with the deepening of winter, and shrunken, but they were still green.

She turned on St. Charles and walked to the Pontchartrain Hotel.

In the little bar, Aaron was already waiting at the table, a glass of wine before him, his leather notebook open, his pen in his hand.

She stood in front of him, conscious of the surprise in his face when he looked at her. Was her hair mussed? Did she look tired?

“He knows everything I think, what I feel, what I have to say.”

“No, that’s not possible,” said Aaron. “Sit down. Tell me.”

“I cannot control him. I can’t drive him away. I think … I think I love him,” she whispered. “He’s threatened to go if I speak to you or to Michael. But he won’t go. He needs me. He needs me to see him and be near him; he’s clever, but not that clever. He needs me to give him purpose and bring him closer to life.”

She was staring at the long bar, and the one small bald-headed man at the end of it, fleshly being with a slit of a mouth, and at the pale anemic bartender polishing something as bartenders always do. Rows of bottles full of poison. Quiet in here. Dim lights.

She sat down and turned and looked at Aaron.

“Why did you lie to me?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were sent here to stop him?”

“I have not been sent here to stop him. I’ve never lied.”

“You know that he can come through. You know it’s his purpose, and you are committed to stopping it. You have always been.”

“I know what I read in the history, the same as you know it. I gave you everything.”

“Ah, but you know it’s