The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,567

said. “And you can’t do it without me.”

“You know what I want and what I have always wanted. No more shells, Rowan, no more coarse illusions. The living flesh inside you. What other flesh in all the world is ready for me, plastic, and adaptable and swarming with millions upon millions of tiny cells which it will not use in its perfection, what other organism has grown to a thousand times its size in the first few weeks of its beginning, and is ready now to unfurl and lengthen and swell as my cells merge with it!”

“Get away from me. Get away from my child! You’re a stupid, crazed thing. You won’t touch my child! You won’t touch me!” She was trembling as if her anger was too great to be contained; she could feel it boiling in her veins. Her feet were wet and slippery on the boards as she backed away, drawing on her anger, struggling to direct it against him.

“Did you think you could trick me, Rowan?” he said in that slow, patient, beautiful voice, his handsome image holding. “With your little performance before Aaron and Michael? Did you think. I couldn’t see into the depths of your soul? I made your soul. I chose the genes that went into you. I chose your parents, I chose your ancestors, I bred you, Rowan. I know where flesh and mind meet in you. I know your strength as no one else knows it. And you have always known what I wanted of you. You knew when you read the history. You saw Lemle’s fetus slumbering in that little bed of tubes and chemicals. You knew! You knew when you ran from the laboratory what your brilliance and courage could have done even then without me, without the knowledge that I waited for you, that I loved you, that I had the greatest gift to bestow on you. Myself, Rowan. You will help me, or that tiny simmering child will die when I go into it! And that you will never allow.”

“God. God help me!” she whispered, her hands moving down over her belly, in a crisscross as if to ward off a blow, eyes fixed on him. Die, you son of a bitch, die!

The hands of the clock made their tiny click as they shifted, the little hand straight up in line with the big hand. And the first chime of the hour sounded.

“Christ is born, Rowan,” he cried out, his voice huge as the image of the man dissolved in a great boiling cloud of darkness, obscuring the clock, rising to the ceiling, turning in on itself like a funnel. She screamed, struggling backwards against the wall. A shock ran through the rafters, through the plaster. She could hear it like the roar of an earthquake.

“No, God, no!” In sheer panic, she screamed. She turned and ran through the parlor door into the hallway. She reached out for the knob of the front door. “God help me. Michael, Aaron!”

Somebody had to hear her screams. They were deafening in her own ears. They were ripping her apart.

But the rumbling grew louder. She felt his invisible hands on her shoulders. She was thrown forward, hard against the door, her hand slipping off the knob as she fell to her knees, pain shooting up her thighs. The darkness was rising all around her, the heat was rising.

“No, not my child, I’ll destroy you, with my last breath, I’ll destroy you.” She turned in one last desperate fury, facing the darkness, spitting at it in hate, willing it to die, as the arms wound around her and dragged her down on the floor.

The back of her head scraped the wood of the door, and then banged against the floorboards, as her legs were wrenched forward. She was staring upwards, struggling to rise, her arms flailing, the darkness bubbling over her.

“Damn you, damn you in hell, Lasher, die. Die like that old woman! Die!” she screamed.

“Yes, Rowan, your child, and Michael’s child!”

The voice surrounded her like the darkness and the heat. Her head was forced back again, slammed down again, and her arms pinned, wide and helpless.

“You my mother and Michael my father! It is the witching hour, Rowan. The clock is striking. I will be flesh. I will be born.”

The darkness furled again, it coiled in upon itself and it shot downward. It shot into her, raping her, splitting her apart. Like a giant fist it shot upwards inside her womb,