The tale of the body thief - By Anne Rice Page 0,226
didn’t know of, lost in the depths of the jungle. Ah, think of how many such discoveries there must be.”
Ah, how genuine the feeling, how resonant the voice.
“Why have you forgiven me?” I asked.
He stopped his pacing, and looked at me, and I was so distracted by the evidence of the blood in him, and how it had changed his skin and hair and eyes, that I couldn’t think for a moment. I held up my hand, begging him not to speak. Why did I never get used to this magic? I dropped my hand, allowing him, nay, bidding him, to go on.
“You knew I would,” he said, assuming his old measured and restrained tone. “You knew when you did it that I’d go on loving you. That I’d need you. That I would seek you out and cling to you of all the beings in this world.”
“Oh, no. I swear I didn’t,” I whispered.
“I went off awhile to punish you. You’re past all patience, really you are. You are the damnedest creature, as you’ve been called by wiser beings than I. But you knew I’d come back. You knew I’d be here.”
“No, I never dreamt it.”
“Don’t start weeping again.”
“I like to weep. I must. Why else would I do it so much?”
“Well, stop!”
“Oh, it’s going to be fun, isn’t it? You think you are the leader of this little coven, don’t you, and you’re going to start bossing me around.”
“Come again?”
“You don’t even look like the elder of the two of us anymore, and you never were the elder. You let my beautiful and irresistible visage deceive you in the simplest and most foolish way. I’m the leader. This is my house. I shall say if we go to Rio.”
He began to laugh. Slowly at first, and then more deeply and freely. If there was menace in him it was only in the great flashing shifts of expression, the dark glint in his eyes. But I wasn’t sure there was any menace at all.
“You are the leader?” he asked scornfully. The old authority.
“Yes, I am. So you ran off … you wanted to show me you could get along without me. You could hunt for yourself; you could find a hiding place by day. You didn’t need me. But here you are!”
“Are you coming with us to Rio or not?”
“Coming with us! Did you say ‘us’?”
“I did.”
He walked over to the chair nearest the end of the couch and sat down. It penetrated to me that obviously he was already in full command of his new powers. And I, of course, couldn’t gauge how strong he truly was merely by looking at him. The dark tone of his skin concealed too much. He crossed his legs and fell into an easy posture of relaxation, but with David’s dignity intact.
Perhaps it was a matter of the way his back remained straight against the chair behind him, or the elegant way his hand rested on his ankle, and the other arm molded itself to the arm of the chair.
Only the thick wavy brown hair betrayed the dignity somewhat, tumbling down on his forehead so that finally he gave a little unconscious toss to his head.
But quite suddenly his composure melted; his face bore all the sudden lines of serious confusion, and then pure distress.
I couldn’t stand it. But I forced myself to be silent.
“I tried to hate you,” he confessed, the eyes widening even as the voice nearly died away. “I couldn’t do it; it’s as simple as that.” And for one moment there was the menace, the great preternatural anger, glaring out of him, before the face became perfectly miserable and then merely sad.
“Why not?”
“Don’t play with me.”
“I’ve never played with you! I mean these things when I say them. How can you not hate me?”
“I’d be making the same mistake you made if I hated you,” he said, eyebrows raised. “Don’t you see what you’ve done? You’ve given me the gift, but you spared me the capitulation. You’ve brought me over with all your skill and all your strength, but you didn’t require of me the moral defeat. You took the decision from me, and gave me what I could not help but want.”
I was speechless. It was all true, but it was the damnedest lie I’d ever heard. “Then rape and murder are our paths to glory! I don’t buy it. They are filthy. We are all damned and now you are too. And that’s what I’ve done