The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,557

left. Possibly even before you left.”

“You knew this? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“Michael, we’re dealing with something that knows what we’re saying to each other even now.”

“Oh, God!”

“There isn’t any place we can hide from this being,” said Aaron. “Except perhaps in the sanctuary of our own minds. Rowan said many things to me. But the crux of it is that this entire battle is now in Rowan’s hands.”

“Aaron, there must be something we can do. We knew it would happen; we knew it would come to this. You knew before you ever laid eyes on me that it would come to this.”

“Michael, that’s just the point. She is the only one who can do anything. And in loving her, and staying close to her, you are using the age-old tools at your command.”

“That can’t be enough!” He could hardly stand this. He stood up, paced for a minute, and then wound up with his hands on the mantel, staring down into the fire. “You should have called me, Aaron. You should have told me.”

“Look, take your anger out on me if it makes you feel better, but the fact is, she forbade my contacting you with a threat. She was full of threats. Some of these threats were made in the guise of warnings—that her invisible companion wanted to kill me and would soon do it—but they were genuine threats.”

“Christ, when did this happen?”

“Doesn’t matter. She told me to go back to England while I still had time.”

“She told you this? What else did she tell you?”

“I chose not to do it. But what more I can do here, I don’t honestly know. I know that she wanted you to remain in California because she felt you were safe there. But you see, this situation has become too complicated for simple or literal interpretation of the things she said.”

“I don’t know what you mean. What is a literal interpretation? What other kind of interpretation is there? I don’t get it.”

“Michael, she talked in riddles. It wasn’t communication so much as a demonstration of a struggle. Again, I have to remind you, this being, if he chooses, can be here with us in this room. We have no safe place in which we can plot aloud against him. Imagine a boxing match if you can, in which the opponents can read each other’s minds. Imagine a war, where every conceivable strategy is known telepathically from the start.”

“It ups the stakes, ups the excitement, but it isn’t impossible.”

“I agree with you, but it serves no purpose for me to tell you everything that Rowan said to me. Suffice it to say, Rowan is the most able opponent this being has ever had.”

“Aaron, you warned her long ago not to let this thing take her away from us. You warned her that it would seek to divide her from those she loved.”

“I did. And I am sure she remembers it, Michael. Rowan is a human being upon whom almost nothing is lost. And believe me, I have argued with her since. I have told her in the plainest language why she must not allow this being to mutate. But the decision is in her hands.”

“You’re saying in effect that we have to just wait and let her fight this alone.”

“I’m saying in effect that you’re doing what you were meant to do. Love her. Stay near her. Remind her by your very presence of what is natural and inherently good. This is a struggle between the natural and the unnatural, Michael. No matter what that being is made of, no matter what he comes from—it’s a struggle between normal life and aberration. Between evolution on the one hand and disastrous intervention on the other. And both have their mysteries and their miracles, and nobody knows that better than Rowan herself.”

He stood up and put his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Sit down and listen to what I’m saying,” he said.

“I have been listening,” said Michael crossly. But he obeyed. He sat on the edge of the chair, and he couldn’t stop himself from making his right hand into a fist and grinding it into his left palm.

“All her life, Rowan has confronted this split between the natural and the aberrant,” said Aaron. “Rowan is essentially a conservative human being. And creatures like Lasher don’t change one’s basic nature. They can only work upon the traits which are already there. No one wanted that lovely white-dress wedding more than Rowan did. No