The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,550

the windows. The mob was streaming into the corridors of the University of Leiden, and Petyr was running towards her.

“No, Rowan. Don’t do it.”

She woke up with a start. Footsteps on the stairs.

She climbed out of the bed. “Michael?”

“I’m here, honey.”

Just a big shadow in the darkness, smelling of the winter cold, and then his warm trembling hands on her. Roughened and tender, and his face pressed against her.

“Oh, God, Michael, it’s been forever. Why did you leave me?”

“Rowan, honey … ”

“Why?” She was sobbing. “Don’t let me go, Michael, please. Don’t let me go.”

He cradled her in his arms.

“You shouldn’t have gone, Michael. You shouldn’t have.” She was crying and she knew he couldn’t even understand what she was saying, and that she shouldn’t say it, and finally she just covered him with kisses, savoring the saltiness and roughness of his skin, and the clumsy gentleness of his hands.

“Tell me what’s the matter, what’s really the matter?”

“That I love you. That when you’re not here, it’s … it’s like you aren’t real.”

She was half awake when he slipped away. She didn’t want that dream to come back. She’d been lying next to him, snuggled against his chest, spoon fashion, holding tight to his arm, and now as he got out of bed, she watched almost furtively as he pulled on his jeans, and brought the tight long-sleeved rugby shirt down over his head.

“Stay here,” she whispered.

“It’s the doorbell,” he said. “My little surprise. No, don’t get up. It’s nothing really, just something that I brought with me from San Francisco. Why don’t you go on and sleep?”

He bent to kiss her, and she tugged at his hair. She brought him down close to her with insistent fingers, until she could smell the warm skin of his forehead, and kiss him on that smoothness, the bone underneath like a hard stone. She didn’t know why that felt so good to her, his skin so moist and warm and real. She kissed him hard on the mouth.

Even before his lips left her, the dream returned.

I don’t want to see that manikin on the table. “What is it? It can’t be alive.”

Lemle was gowned and masked and gloved for the surgery. He peered at her from under his mossy eyebrows. “You’re not even sterile. Get scrubbed, I need you.” The lights were like two merciless eyes trained on the table.

That thing with its tiny organs and its big eyes.

Lemle held something in his tongs. And the little body split open in the steaming incubator beside the table was a fetus, slumbering on with its chest gaping. That was a heart in the tongs, wasn’t it? You monster, that you would do that. “We’re going to have to work fast while the tissue is at its optimum … ”

“It’s very hard for us to come through,” said the woman.

“But who are you?” she asked.

Rembrandt was sitting by the window, so tired in his old age, his nose rounded, his hair in wisps. He looked up at her sleepily when she asked him what he thought, and then he took her hand in his fingers, and he placed it on her own breast.

“I know that painting,” she said, “the young bride.”

She woke up. The clock had struck two. She had waited in her sleep, thinking there would be more chimes, perhaps ten in number, which meant she’d slept late; but two? That was so late.

She heard music from far away. A harpsichord was playing and a low voice was singing, a slow mournful carol, an old Celtic carol about a child laid in the manger. Smell of the Christmas tree, sweetly fragrant, and of the fire burning. Delicious in the warmth.

She was lying on her side, looking at the window, at the crust of frost forming on the panes. Very slowly a figure began to take shape—a man, with his back to the glass and his arms folded.

She narrowed her eyes, observing the process—the darkly tanned face coming into focus, billions of tiny cells forming it, and the deep glistening green eyes. The perfect replica of jeans and a shirt. Detailed like a Richard Avedon photograph in which every hair of the head is distinct and shining. He relaxed his arms and came toward her. She could hear and see the movement of his garments. As he bent over her, she saw the pores in his skin.

So we are jealous, are we? She touched his cheek, touched his forehead the way she had touched