The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,569

groping in the dark and finding his forehead, finding the thick mass of manly curls, finding his eyes fluttering under her palm, finding his mouth now half closed with the sobs coming out of it, finding his chest, and the heart beneath it and the long muscular arms flopping against the boards, yes, this thing so big now that she could lay her head on its pumping chest, and the cock between his legs, yes, and the thighs, yes, and struggling upwards, she lay on top of him, both hands on him, feeling the rise and fall of his breath beneath her, the lungs enlarging, filling, the heart pumping, and dark silky hair sprouting around his cock, and then it was a web again, a web shining in the darkness, full of chemistry and mystery and certainty, and she sank down into the blackness, into the quiet.

A voice was talking to her, intimate and soft.

“Stop the blood.”

She couldn’t answer.

“You’re bleeding. Stop the blood.”

“I don’t want to live,” she said. Surely the house was burning. Come, old woman, with your lamp. Light the drapes.

Lemle said, “I never said it wasn’t possible, you know. The thing is that once an advance has been envisioned, it is inevitable. Millions of cells. The embryo is the key to immortality.”

“You can still kill him,” said Petyr. He was standing over her, looking down at her.

“They’re figments of your imagination, of your conscience.”

“Am I dying?”

“No.” He laughed. Such a soft silky laugh. “Can you hear me? I am laughing, Rowan. I can laugh now.”

Take me to hell now. Let me die.

“No, my darling, my precious beautiful darling, stop the bleeding.”

The sunlight waked her. She lay on the living room floor, on the soft Chinese rug, and her first thought was the house had not burned. The awful heat had not consumed it. Somehow it had been saved.

For a moment she didn’t understand what she was seeing.

A man was sitting beside her, looking down at her, and he had the smooth unblemished skin of a baby—over the structure of a man’s face, but it resembled her face. She had never seen a human being who looked this much like her. But there were definite differences. His eyes were large and blue and fringed with black lashes, and his hair was black like Michael’s hair. It was Michael’s hair. Michael’s hair and Michael’s eyes. But he was slender like her. His smooth hairless chest was narrow as her chest had been in childhood, with two shining pink nipples, and his arms were narrow, though finely muscled, and the delicate fingers of his hand, with which he stroked his lip thoughtfully as he looked at her, were narrow and like her fingers.

But he was bigger man she was, as big as a man. And the dried mucus and blood was all over him, like a dark ruby red map covering him.

She felt a moan coming up out of her throat, pushing against her lips. Her whole body moved with it, and suddenly she screamed. Rising off the boards, she screamed. Louder, longer, more wildly than she had ever screamed last night in all her fear. She was this scream, leaving herself, leaving everything she’d seen and remembered in total horror.

His hand came down over her mouth, pushing her flat against the rug. She couldn’t move. The scream was turning around inside, like vomit that could choke her. A deep convulsion of pain moved through her. She lay limp, silent.

He leaned over her. “Don’t do it,” he whispered. The old voice. Of course, his voice, with his unmistakable inflection.

His smooth face looked perfectly innocent, a picture of astonishment with its flawless and radiant cheeks, and its smooth narrow nose, and the great blue eyes blinking at her. Snapping open and closed like the eyes of the manikin on the table in her dreams. He smiled. “I need you,” he said. “I love you. And I’m your child.”

After a while, he took his hand away.

She sat up. Her nightgown was soaked with blood and dry and stiff with it. The smell of blood was everywhere. Like the smell of the Emergency Room.

She scooted back on the rug and sat forward, her knee crooked, peering at him.

Nipples, perfect, yes, cock perfect, yes, though the real test would come when it was hard. Hair perfect, yes, but what about inside? What about every precise little interlocking part?

She drew closer, staring at his shoulders, watching the rise and fall of his chest with his