I sent. They’ll never let down this guard, or stop looking for me, till I’m dead.
“Then who will there be to go after them? To tell the others? To reveal the awful secret to the brothers and sisters that this Order is evil … that the old maxims of the Catholic Church perhaps have always been true. What is supernatural and not of God is evil. To find the male Taltos! To bring him together with the female …”
He looked up. Ash’s face was sad. Samuel, leaning against the closed window, appeared, for all the fleshy folds of his face, sad and concerned as well. Calm yourself, he thought, make your words count. Do not lapse into hysteria.
He went on. “You speak of centuries, Ash,” he said, “the way others speak of years. Then the female within the Talamasca might have lived for centuries. This might have been the only purpose always. Out of dark times, a web spun that is so evil and so perverse that modern men and women can’t even conceive of it! It’s too simple, all of these stupid men and women watching out for one single being—a Taltos, a creature that can breed with its mate so fast and so successfully that its kind would quickly overtake the world. I wonder what makes them so sure of themselves, the invisible and anonymous and secretive Elders of the Order, so sure that they themselves are not being—”
He paused. It had never occurred to him. Of course. Had he ever been in a room with a sentient being who wasn’t human? Now he was, and who was to say how many such species lived in our comfortable little world, walking about, passing for human while servicing their own agenda in every respect? Taltos. Vampire. The aged dwarf, with his own clock and his own grudges and stories.
How quiet they both were. Had there been an unspoken decision to let him rave?
“You know what I would like to do?” Yuri asked. “What?” asked Ash.
“Go to the Amsterdam Motherhouse and kill them, the Elders. But that’s just it, I don’t think I can find them. I don’t think they are in the Amsterdam Motherhouse, or that they ever have been. I don’t know who or what they are. Samuel, I want to take the car now. I have to go home here in London. I have to see the brothers and the sisters.”
“No,” said Samuel. “They’ll kill you.”
“They can’t all be in it. That’s my last hope; we are all dupes of a few. Now, please, I want to take the car outside London to the Motherhouse. I want to walk inside quickly, before anyone is the wiser, and grab hold of the brothers and sisters, and make them listen. Look, I have to do this! I have to warn them. Why, Aaron’s dead!”
He stopped. He realized he’d been frightening them, these two strange friends. The little man had his arms folded again, grotesquely, because they were so short and his chest was so big. The folded flesh of his forehead had descended in a frown. Ash merely watched him, not frowning, but visibly worrying.
“What do you care, either one of you!” said Yuri suddenly. “You saved my life when I was shot in the mountains. But nobody asked you to do this. Why? What am I to you?”
A little noise came from Samuel, as if to say, This is not worth an answer. Ash answered, however, in a tender voice.
“Maybe we are gypsies, too, Yuri,” he said.
Yuri didn’t answer, but he did not believe in the sentiments this man was describing. He didn’t believe in anything, except that Aaron was dead. He pictured Mona, his little red-haired witch. He saw her, her remarkable little face and her great veil of red hair. He saw her eyes. But he could feel nothing for her. He wished with all his heart that she were here.
“Nothing, I have nothing,” he whispered.
“Yuri,” said Ash. “Please mark what I tell you. The Talamasca was not founded to search for the Taltos. This you can believe on my word. And though I know nothing of the Elders of the Order in this day and age, I have known them in the past; and no, Yuri, they were not Taltos then and I cannot believe they are Taltos now. What would they be, Yuri, females of our species?”
The voice went on unhurried and tender still, but profoundly forceful.