Blood Canticle

by Rice, Anne

  Okay. Now, I love this story. I always have. I think it's neat what happened to Juan Diego. When he was first trudging over the mountain, the Blessed Mother called to him: "Juanito!" Isn't that touching? And touching that thousands of Indians converted to Christianity after these miracles. And certainly it is wonderful that Pope John Paul II, ailing and eighty-two years of age, made it to Mexico to canonize Juan Diego.

  But the Pope's critics aren't so happy. There are rumblings, says the press. Malcontents say there is no proof that Juan Diego ever existed.

  Now, that is really rude!

  And it points to a real misunderstanding of what the great spiritual wealth of Roman Catholicism is all about.

  If nobody can prove that Juan Diego existed, then obviously nobody can prove that he did not.

  But let's suppose for a moment that Juan Diego doesn't exist, or didn't. The Pope is still infallible, right? "Whatever you shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven," Christ said to Peter. Okay?

  Even the worst critics of the Papacy admit that it's a modern marvel, no?

  Therefore, without doubt, and without rumblings, at the instant that John Paul declared Juan Diego a saint, the little guy popped into existence in Heaven! Now think about what probably went through Juan Diego's mind. And don't forget that this is "an indigenous person" of the Americas no less, and here he finds himself in a Heaven which is, by anyone's description, totally beyond description.

  In fact, if the latest crop of mystics are correct and the Heaven to which we go when we enter the Light is very much shaped by our own preconceived notions, Juan Diego, endowed by the full definition given him through the arguments and decisions of the Roman Curia is probably roaming around in his tilma made of cactus fiber, picking roses. I wonder if he has shoes.

  Is he going to be lonely? Of course not. Only an atheist would entertain such a notion. Take it from me, the indescribable Heaven is an indescribable hurricane of magnificence.

  But let's tone it down for our Foot of Sinai senses. Surrounded by his ever blooming garden, Juan Diego can if he wishes keep company with dozens of other saints who spent no time on Earth whatsoever, including the Blessed Virgin Mary's famed parents, Joachim and Anne, and St. Veronica whom I have personally met.

  But it is much more likely that Juan Diego will find himself besieged by prayerful petitions. The voices from "indigenous persons" on Earth as well as the descendants of colonists will bring him in contact with the suffering and the misery of the planet he escaped.

  What am I talking about?

  Simply this. Whether he existed on Earth or not, Juan Diego is probably hard at work, dipping down through the astral layers in his human-shaped soul, listening earnestly to the faithful and relaying their petitions to the All Knowing One. He has to be. He is a saint of immense importance. And no doubt Our Lady of Guadalupe is looking down benevolently upon a whole new stream of tourists and venerators in Mexico City.

  And the Pope has gone home to the Vatican, having canonized in his lifetime 463 saints.

  I wish I was one of those saints. Maybe that's why I had to write this chapter. I'm envious of Juan Diego. Hmmm.

  But I'm not a saint. And that didn't even take five minutes and you know it, so don't complain. It's just that I cannot forget my passion to be officially canonized.

  Alas. Anon. Alors. Mais oui. Eh bien. Proceed to Chapter Eight directly.

  SO, NOBODY EVER ACCUSED ME of acquiring any real wisdom in my two hundred years on this Earth. I know only one way to proceed.

  Clem let us out in front of the hotel, a new one, quite luxurious, and most expensive, and in the thick of things, so to speak, with an address on Canal Street, the great shabby divide of New Orleans, and an

  entrance out back to the French Quarter, the little world I preferred.

  Mona was in such a trance that we had to propel her to the elevator, I on her left and Quinn on her right. Naturally everyone in the lobby took note of us-not because we were blood-sucking immortals bent on destroying two of our kind on the fifteenth floor, but because we were exceedingly and severely gorgeous, especially Mona, wrapped in feathers and shimmering fabric and poised atop a pair of breakneck heels.

  Quinn was thirsting now as strongly as Mona was, and it would see him through what we had to do.

  But I wasn't immune to the questions he'd raised in the car. Poetry, love. And me secretly aspiring to sanctity! What an everlasting life! And remember, honorary Children of the Night, what I said about telepathy. It ain't the real thing, no matter how good it is.

  As soon as we reached the suite, I pushed the door in fairly quietly, without breaking its hinges, since I intended to close it again, and the spectacle into which I plunged on feline feet astonished me.

  Ah, the Savage Garden of this Earth that hath such creatures in it!

  The mavericks were dancing in dim light to the most intense music-a Bartók concerto for violin and orchestra flooding the room at max volume. The music was sad, ripping, overpowering-a command to abandon all things cheap and tawdry, a full-blown engulfing majesty.

  And though they themselves were infinitely more arresting than I had ever anticipated, these two, I spied beyond them on the long deep burgundy-colored couch a cluster of mortal children, bruised, unconscious and obviously being used at random as blood victims.

  All three of us were in the room with the door closed, and the insurgents danced oblivious to us, their senses drenched in lustrous sound and rhythm.

  They were absolutely spectacular in appearance, with tanned skin, rippling jet black hair to the waist-being both of Semitic or Arabic descent-very tall and with large facial features, including magnificent mouths, and they were inherently graceful. They danced with closed eyes, oval faces serene, in huge swaying and arching gestures, humming through closed lips to the music, and the male, who was on the surface almost indistinguishable from the female, every now and then shook out his immense veil of hair and swung it rapidly around him in a circle.

  Their sleek black leather clothes were stunning and unisexual. Supple pants, sleeveless and collarless tops. They wore gold bracelets on their naked upper and lower arms. They embraced each other now and then and let each other go, and as we watched, the female dipped down into the cluster of mortal children and brought up to her lips a limp little boy, and drank from him.

  Mona let out a scream at the sight of this, and at once the two vampires froze, staring at us. So similar were their movements, one would have thought they were grand automatons operated by a central system. The unconscious child was dropped to the couch.

  My heart became a little knot inside me. I could scarcely breathe. The music flooded my brain, the ripping, sad, compelling voice of the violin.

  "Quinn, shut it off," I said, and scarcely had I spoken when the music stopped. The parlor was plunged into a ringing vibrant silence.

  The pair drew together. The figure they made was statuesque.

  They had exquisite arched black eyebrows, heavily lidded eyes with thick eyelashes. Arabic, yes, from the streets of New York. Brother and sister, petty merchant class, real hard work, sixteen when made. It came flooding out of them, and also a torrent of worship for me, a torrent of exuberant happiness that I had "appeared." Oh, God help me. Juan Diego stand by me.

  "We didn't dream we'd see you, actually see you!" said the female, with heavily accented words, voice rich and beguiling and reverent. "We hoped and prayed, and here you are and it is really you." Her lovely hands unfolded and reached out to me.

  "Why did you kill innocent victims in my town," I whispered. "Where did you get these innocent children?"

  "But you, you drank from children yourself, it's in the pages of the Chronicles," the male said. Same accented words, courteous, gentle tone. "We were imitating you! What have we done that you have not done!"

  The knot in my heart grew tighter. Those accursed deeds, those accursed confessions. Oh God, forgive me.

  "You know my warnings," I said. "Everyone k
nows. Stay out of New Orleans, New Orleans belongs to me. Who doesn't know those warnings?"

  "But we came to worship you!" said the male. "We've been here before. You never cared. It was as if you were a legend."

  Suddenly they realized their immense miscalculation. The male raced for the door, but Quinn caught his arm effortlessly and swung him around.

  The female stood shocked in the center of the room, her jet black eyes staring at me, then silently moving over Mona.

  "No," she said, "no, you can't simply destroy us, you won't do it. You won't take from us our immortal souls, you will not. You are our dream, you are our model in all things. You cannot do this to us. Oh, I beg you, make of us your servants, teach us all things. We'll never disobey! We'll learn everything from you."

  "You knew the law," I said. "You chose to break it. You thought you'd slip in and out, leaving your sins behind you. And you murder children in my name? You do this in my city? You never learned from my pages. Don't throw them in my face." I began to tremble. "You think I confessed what I did for you to follow my example? My faults were no template for your abominations."

  "But we adore you!" said the male. "We come in pilgrimage to you. Bind us to yourself and we'll be filled with your grace, we'll be perfected in you."

  "I have no absolution for you," I said. "You stand condemned. It's finished."

  I heard Mona let out a little moan. I could see the struggle in Quinn's face.

  The male tensed his entire body trying to get loose. Quinn held him with one hand wrapped around his upper arm.

  "Let us go," said the male. "We'll leave your city. We'll warn others never to come. We'll testify. We'll be your holy witnesses. Everywhere we go, we will tell others that we've seen you, heard the warning from your own lips."

  "Drink," I said to Quinn. "Drink till there's no more to drink. Drink as you've never done it before."

  "I begrudge nothing!" whispered the male and he closed his eyes. All the struggling left him. "I am your fount in love."

  Without hesitation, Quinn put his right hand on the huge mass of springy hair of the male and brought the head to the proper position, twisting it until the neck was bared, and then, closing his eyes, he sank his teeth.

  Mona stared enthralled, then turned sharply to the female. The thirst transformed Mona's face. She appeared half asleep, eyes fastened to the female.

  "Take her," I said.

  The female gazed fearlessly on Mona. "And you, so beautiful," the vagrant said in her sharpened words, "you so beautiful, you come to take my blood, I give my blood, here, I give it to you. Only spare me for eternity." She opened her arms, these arms with gold bracelets, long fingers beckoning.

  Mona moved as if in a trance. She embraced the sleek body of the female with her left arm, and pushed the hair away from the right side of the female's face, and bent her supple body down and took her.

  I watched Mona. It was always a spectacle-the vampire feeding, a seeming human with her teeth locked to another, eyes closed as if in deep sleep, no sound, only the victim shuddering and twisting, even her fingers motionless as she drank deeply, savoring the drug of the blood.

  And so she was launched on the Devil's Road with this wretched sacrament, without the need of prodding, letting the thirst carry her through it.

  The male collapsed at Quinn's feet. Quinn was dazed. He staggered backwards. "So far away," Quinn whispered. "An ancient one, from Jericho, can you imagine it, and he made them, and taught them nothing? What am I to do with this treasure of images? What am I to do with this curious intimacy?"

  "Keep it close," I said. "Store it where the finer things are stored until such time as you need it."

  I moved towards him slowly, then took the limp, soft victim from the floor and brought him into the tiled bathroom of the suite, a palatial marvel with a spacious tub completely surrounded by steps of green marble, and I threw the unfortunate one into the tub where he tumbled like a marionette without strings, settling silently. His eyes had rolled up into his head. He was murmuring in his native tongue, a fine collection of bronzed limbs and glints of gold, and the massive hair nesting beneath him.

  In the parlor, I found Mona with her victim on their knees, and then Mona drew back, and for a moment it seemed she would lose consciousness herself, and they would be together in this, these two, their hair intermingling, but Mona rose and lifted the female.

  I beckoned.

  She carried the female, as a man would carry a woman, arm under her knees, arm around her shoulder. Dark hair streaming down.

  "There in the tub, with her companion," I said.

  Mona heaved her over with a sure gesture, letting her tumble in beside him.

  The female was silent, unconscious, dreaming.

  "Their Maker was old," Mona whispered, as if not to wake either of them. "He was tramping through eternity. Sometimes he knew who and what he was. And other times he didn't. He made the pair of them to run his errands. They found out everything on their own. They were so cruel. They were cruel for pleasure. They would have killed the children in the other room. They would have left them here."

  "You want to kiss them good-bye?" I asked.

  "I loathe them," she responded. She sounded so sleepy. "But why are they so lovely? Their hair so fine? It

  wasn't their fault. Their souls might have been beautiful."

  "You think so? You really think so? You didn't taste their free will when you drank from them? You

  didn't taste an immense sweep of modern knowledge when you drank from them? And what was the summit of their existence, may I ask, other than bashing innocent souls; was it dancing and listening to fine music?"

  Quinn came up behind her, keen for my words, and wrapped his arms around her. She raised her eyebrows and nodded.

  "Watch what I do," I said. "Remember it."

  I let loose the Fire with all my consuming power. Let it be merciful, Saint Lestat. I saw the outline of

  their black bones in the flames for a second, the heat blasting my face, and it was in that second, and that

  second only, that the bones moved.

  The fire flashed to the ceiling, scorched it, and then shrank to nothingness. A tracery of the bones

  vanished. All that remained was black grease in the spacious tub.

  Mona gasped. Her cheeks were beating with the blood she'd drunk. She stepped forward and peered down

  at the black bubbling grease. Quinn was speechless and plainly horrified.

  "And so you can do that to me when I want to go, can't you?" Mona said, her voice raw.

  I was shocked.

  "No, dolly dear," I said. "I couldn't. Not if my life depended on it."

  I let loose the Fire again. I sent it into the oily residue until there was nothing left.

  And so the tall graceful long-haired dancers would dance no more.

  I felt slightly dizzy. I shrank back into myself. I felt sick. I moved away from my own power. I collected

  all my force into my human-shaped self.

  In the parlor, in the gentle manner of a human, I examined the children. There were four of them, and

  they had been beaten as well as bled. They were lying in a heap. All were unconscious, but I detected no

  blows to the head, no rushing of blood within the skulls, no permanent damage. Boys in shorts and skivy shirts and tennis shoes. No familial resemblance. How their parents must have been weeping. All could survive. I was certain of it.

  The sins of my past rose up to taunt me. All my own excesses mocked me.

  I made the requisite call to see to their care. I told the astonished clerk what I had discovered.

  In the hallway, Mona was crying. Quinn held her.

  "Come on, we're headed for my flat now. So it wasn't perfect, Quinn, you were right. But it's over."

  "Lestat," he said, his eyes glittering as we pulled the weeping Mona into the elevator. "I thought it was

  nothing short of magnificent."

  WE
HAD TO DRAG MONA through the French Quarter streets. She fell in love with the colors made by spilt gasoline in mud puddles, with exotic furniture in the store windows of Hurwitz Mintz, with antique shop displays of threadbare gilded chairs and lacquered square grand pianos and idling trucks belching white smoke from their upturned exhaust pipes and laughing mortals passing us on the narrow sidewalks carrying adorable babies, who twisted their little necks to peer at us-

  -and an old black man playing a tenor saxophone for money, which we gave him in abundance, and a hat-wearing hot dog vender from which Mona could not buy a hot dog now save to stare at it and sniff it and heave it into a trash bin, which gave her staggering pause-

  -and of course we attracted attention everywhere, in very unvampirelike fashion, Quinn being taller than anyone we passed and perhaps four times as handsome, with his porcelain face, and all the rest you know, and every now and then Mona with hair flying broke from us and ran ahead frantically, the lazy evening crowds opening and closing for her as though she were on a Heavenly errand, thank God, and then she'd circle back-

  -dancing and clicking and stomping like a flamenco dancer, letting the feather wrapper fly out, trail, sag, and then gathering it in again, and crying to see her reflection in shop glass, and darting down side streets until we grabbed ahold of her and claimed custody of her and wouldn't let her go.

  When we got to my town house I gave two hundred dollars to my two mortal guards who were happily astonished, and as Quinn and I started back the open carriageway, Mona gave us the slip.

  We didn't realize it until we'd reached the courtyard garden, and just when I was about to exclaim about the ancient cherub fountain and all the tropical wonders blooming against my much cherished brick walls, I sensed that she was totally gone.