Blood Canticle

by Rice, Anne

  Rowan paused. Michael hesitated, and then, as she put her face into her hands, he continued the story.

  "The secret genes were passed on by the Earls of Donnelaith, Scotland, and their kith and kin, this we know for certain, and superstitious legends grew up about any occasional Taltos child born to their household.

  "Meantime, a May Day orgy gave way to a misalliance between an Earl and a common woman of the glen, which led in three generations to the foundation of the Mayfair family. The Taltos genes were passed on in this way to what would later become a great colonial clan, first on the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue, and then here in Louisiana.

  "But even before the Mayfair family had a name, the Talamasca had become intimately involved with its origins-recording the story of a witch by the name of Suzanne, who had called up a spirit quite by accident, a spirit who appeared to be a brown-eyed man who answered to the name Lasher-a spirit who was to haunt the family right down to Rowan's generation. The ghost originated in the glen of Donnelaith, as did the Mayfairs."

  Rowan broke in:

  "You see, we thought it was the ghost of a human being," she said, "or some astral being without a human story. I believed this even as it courted me, and I tried to control it."

  "And it was a Taltos ghost," I said.

  "Yes," she said, "and it was biding its time, generation by generation, until a witch would come who would bear a Taltos child, a witch with psychic powers enough to aid it to possess that unborn Taltos fetus and be reborn within it."

  Michael interrupted: "And I didn't know I had Mayfair genes in my blood. I never even dreamed. It was a dalliance between Oncle Julien and a riverfront Irish girl, and the child went to an Irish Catholic orphanage. And that was one of my ancestors."

  "Oh, this Lasher was a clever ghost," said Rowan, shaking her head with a bitter smile. "Over the generations he brought this family great wealth in any number of ways. Strong witches appeared in various generations who really knew how to use him. And the men he despised and punished if they got in his way. Except for Julien. Julien was the only Mayfair male strong enough to use Lasher to perfection. And Julien regarded Lasher as an evil thing, but even Julien thought that Lasher had once been human."

  "Lasher himself thought so," said Michael. "The ghost didn't fully understand who he was or what he wanted, except to be reborn. He guided everything to that purpose: to come through, to be flesh and blood again. I saw the ghost from the time I was a little kid, passing the fence outside. I'd see him standing in the garden. I never dreamed that one day I'd live in this house. I never dreamed that one day-." He stopped, clearly unable to continue.

  "The Legacy was established very early on," said Mona. "You had to keep the name Mayfair, whether you married out or not, if you were to be part of the family, if you were to be connected to the Legacy."

  "And that way, the clan was kept close," said Rowan, "and there was much interbreeding."

  "And there is one Heiress in each generation," said Mona, wiping her nose, "and that Heiress lives in this house and must be able to bear children."

  "It was a matriarchy in legal and moral fact," said Rowan softly. "And Michael and I . . . we fit the design of Lasher perfectly. Of course my child was not pure Taltos. It was Taltos mixed with human. It was perhaps five months in the womb. And on the night of its birth, there came Lasher with all his force down into the infant manniken making it grow and cry out to me to use all my power. Rowan the Mad Scientist knew the circuitry and the cells! Rowan the Mad Scientist knew how to guide the monstrous offspring." She closed her eyes. She turned away, as though the remembrance was pressing against her.

  Brilliant flash of the Man Baby, tall, slippery, face evincing wonder, gawky, pinkish limbs. Rowan clothing it as the creature laughed delightedly. Flash of it clutching her breast, drinking. Rowan sinking to the floor in unconsciousness. The creature drinking hungrily from the other breast as well. My Darling, what secrets these are, indeed.

  Silence.

  A look of pure torment on the face of Michael. How well I understood his pain now, that he had fathered these creatures, and apparently no others.

  Stirling appeared fearful as before, yet shamelessly fascinated. Mona, her eyes closed, leaned against Quinn as he watched Rowan. Sounds of the garden-soft, inevitable, indifferent, sweet.

  "Walking Babies, horrible things," said Dolly Jean from her sleep. "If only I'd a known that ghost was a Walking Baby, but the thought never entered my head. . . ."

  "Not my girl," whispered Mona. "My girl wasn't a horrible thing. Her father was the demon, but not her."

  Michael fighting with the creature called Lasher. Snow and ice. The creature tremendously slippery and crafty and flexible and invulnerable to the blows. The creature laughing and mocking Michael. The creature knocking Michael into the ice-cold swimming pool, Michael sinking down to the bottom. Sirens, trucks, Rowan and the creature running towards the car . . .

  "I left with it," Rowan whispered. "This Man Child thing with no name other than the name of a ghost. I left Michael. I took it away. The Mad Scientist thought first and foremost to save it from those who might have destroyed it, and it had possessed the body of Michael's child and sent that child's true soul Heavenward, and I knew that Michael wouldn't stop until he'd killed it, and so I fled with it. It was a dreadful error."

  Silence.

  Rowan remained turned to the side, as though away from all that she'd said, her eyes closed, her hands limp on the table. I wanted to enfold her in my arms. I did nothing.

  Michael remained still. Father of this monster. No. Sent that child's true soul Heavenward. Father of the mysterious body only, the vehicle for the mystery.

  "The Taltos," I said to Rowan, "it fathered a daughter in you? You bore two of these creatures?"

  Rowan nodded. She opened her eyes and looked at me with a steady gaze. There might as well have been no one else there.

  "The male was an atrocity," she said. "A spiritual monster. It had two goals-to remember what it had been, as Taltos memories inundated it-and to father a female with which to breed. I lost control of it almost immediately. I miscarried again and again as it drank my breasts dry. Only in the very beginning could I lure it into laboratories or hospitals, where, using my authority, I managed to accomplish some tests and secretly forward the material on to a laboratory in San Francisco.

  "As the Heiress of the Legacy, I could draw all the money we needed from our foreign accounts, as long as I stayed one jump ahead of the family, which was searching for me. So the creature had the funds to drag me on a world odyssey. In the glen of Donnelaith, a torrent of memories came back to it. But it was soon desperate to get back to the States.

  "I chose Houston as a city where we might settle and I could study it. Among hospitals and medical centers, I thought I could order the equipment for a laboratory and not be discovered. Unbeknownst to me this was perfect for the fiend. Having no luck with me, he was soon leaving me tied up, starved and near insane. Only much later did I learn that he was making the short journey to New Orleans to mate with random female Mayfairs. Of course his victims fatally miscarried, and were found dead in their own blood.

  "The family was in a panic.

  "Mayfair women began dying one after another. And they couldn't trace Rowan who had abandoned Michael for the fiend. And Rowan was now a prisoner. Soon Mayfair women everywhere were surrounded by armed guards. The creature came to First Street and almost gained access to Mona.

  "But Mona, in the time of my desertion, had made love with Michael and was already carrying a Taltos child, though she didn't know it.

  "At last, when I'd almost given up hope of life, I conceived another child of my own. And the child spoke to me. It said the very word 'Taltos.' It told me its name: Emaleth. It spoke of times its father couldn't remember. In the secret telepathic voice, I told it that when it was born it was to go to Michael in New Orleans. I told it about the house on First Street. If I should die, it must reach Michae
l with word of my death. We talked to each other in silence.

  "Lasher was jubilant when he heard the child's voice! He would soon have his bride. It was then, as he softened to me, that I managed to escape. With the filthy clothes on my back I made for the highway.

  "I never made it home. They found me comatose in a roadside park, bleeding from an apparent miscarriage. No one dreamed I'd given birth to Emaleth, and she, poor orphan, unable to rouse me or draw more milk from me, had started her long trek to New Orleans on foot.

  "I was rushed home. In the hospital they had to remove my organs to stop the hemorrhaging. It probably saved me from the wasting sickness that later almost destroyed Mona. But my brain had been severely damaged. I remained in a deep coma.

  "I was unconscious upstairs when Lasher, dressed as a priest, slipped past the guards and into this house, and appealed to the Talamasca and to Michael to let him live. After all, was he not a priceless specimen? He counted on the Talamasca to save him. He poured out a tale of his former life. It's a fascinating study of the innocence of the Taltos. But Lasher wasn't innocent. Lasher had brought death. Michael fought him and killed him. And so his long rule of the Mayfair family came to an end. I was still comatose when Emaleth came and bent to give me her healing milk.

  "When I woke and saw the Taltos daughter I had birthed, and realized I was drinking from her breast, I was horrified. This gangly creature with a baby face terrified me. It was a moment of dislocated lucidity. And here I was nursing from the creature as if I were a helpless baby. I grabbed the bedside gun. I killed her. I did that. I destroyed her. That quick and she was no more."

  She shook her head. She looked away as we do when we sink into the past. Guilt, loss . . . her pain seemed beyond these words.

  "It didn't have to happen," she murmured. "What had she done but make her way to the house as I had taught her? What had she done but brought me back to consciousness with her plentiful milk? One lone female Taltos. How could she hurt me? It was the loathing of Lasher that warped my mind. It was the revulsion at this alien species and my own atavistic behavior.

  "And so she died, my girl. And there were two graves beneath this oak. And I, risen from the coma, a monster now myself, buried her." She sighed. "My lost girl," she said. "I had betrayed her."

  Quiet. Even the garden was hushed. The low roar of a passing car seemed as natural as a breeze stirring the trees.

  I was suspended in Rowan's sadness.

  Stirling's eyes were moist and aglow in the shadows as he studied Rowan. Michael said not a word.

  Then Mona spoke very gently.

  "There was trouble in the Talamasca," she said. "It all had to do with the Taltos. Some members had tried to get control of Lasher. They'd even done murder. Michael and Rowan took off for Europe to try to investigate the corruption inside the Order. They felt a familial tie with the Talamasca. We all did. And during that time, I realized I was pregnant. My child began to grow out of control. It began to speak to me. It told me its name was Morrigan." Her voice broke. "I was enchanted, crazed."

  "I went south to Fontevrault plantation house where Dolly Jean was living, and she and Mary Jane Mayfair, my cousin, my friend who later ran away, she and Dolly Jean, they helped me to give birth to Morrigan. It was really, really painful. And beyond scary. But Morrigan was tall and beautiful. No one could look at Morrigan and not say she was beautiful. She was shining and fresh and magical."

  Dolly Jean gave a little cackle in her half sleep. "She knew a whole jumble of human things," she said. "Just a real beastie!"

  "You loved her at the time," said Mona, "you know you did."

  "I'm not saying I didn't," said Dolly Jean, squinting at Mona, "but what do you make of somebody who tells you she's going to take over the whole family and make it a clan of Walking Babies? Was I supposed to be tickled at that?"

  "She was just born!" said Mona softly. "She didn't know what she meant. She had my ambition, my dreams."

  "I don't know where she is," said Rowan in her deep heartfelt voice. "I don't know whether she's alive or dead."

  Mona was deeply miserable, but I had so shamed her over her tears that she held them back painfully. I tried to take her hand. She drew away.

  "But you knew the Taltos who came and took her!" Mona said to Rowan. "You had met him in Europe. He had heard the story of you and Lasher in your wanderings." She turned to me. "That's what happened. He had found them. Yes, another one, an ancient survivor. He was their friend. Of course, they didn't tell me and they didn't tell Morrigan. Oh no, we were children! They kept it to themselves! Imagine. An ancient one. Hadn't I suffered enough to be told about him? And when he came here, they let him take my daughter away."

  "How could I have stopped them?" asked Rowan. "You were with us," she said to Mona. "Morrigan was maddened by the scent of the male on our clothes, on the gifts we'd received from him. And why he came, we'll never know. All we know is what you know. He was out in the garden. She went to the window. She ran out to him. There was no stopping either of them. We never saw them again."

  "Mona, we searched for him by every conceivable means," said Michael. "Surely you must believe us."

  "I want the files," said Mona, "the paperwork. His name, the names of his companies in New York. He was a rich man, a powerful man, this ancient wise one. You admitted that much."

  "I'll be glad to give it to you," said Rowan, "but please understand, he liquidated everything. He vanished."

  "If only you'd searched right away," Mona said bitterly.

  "Mona, you agreed with us at the time," said Rowan. "We would wait until they contacted us. We respected their choice to be together. We didn't think they would simply disappear. We couldn't imagine it."

  "We were afraid of hearing from them," said Michael. "We had no idea how they could multiply or survive in the modern world, how Ash could control them."

  "Ash was the name of the man," I said.

  "Yes," said Michael. His pain opened up as he spoke. "Ash Templeton. Ashwas ancient. He had been alone for so long it was unimaginable. He'd seen his species become extinct. He was the one who told us the history of the Taltos. He believed that the Taltos couldn't survive in the world of humans. After all, he'd seen them wiped out. His was a tragic history. Of course, as we listened to his stories we had no idea that Morrigan even existed. We left Ash in New York. We loved him. We pledged eternal friendship. Then we got home and discovered Morrigan."

  "Maybe it was some telepathic sense that guided him to Morrigan," I said.

  "We don't know," said Rowan. "But he came here, he entered the side garden, he saw her through the windows, and she picked up his scent and she ran to him."

  "For years we were afraid," said Michael. "We combed the news services for any story that might involve the Taltos. We were on the alert and so was the Talamasca. Mona, you must think back to the time before you were so sick. You must remember. We were afraid because we knew that the species might do great harm to human beings."

  "Well put!" said Dolly Jean. "And Morrigan all fired up to rule the world, preaching that her vision came from her human father and mother. When she wasn't looking back she was looking ahead, or dancing in circles or sniffing at scents, she was a wild beastie."

  "Oh hush up, Dolly Jean, please," whispered Mona, biting her lower lip, "you know you loved her. And all of you-I wanted to look for them long before you did. For years you wouldn't tell me that name. Oh, just leave it in your hands. Leave it in the hands of Mayfair and Mayfair. And now you say it as if it's nothing. Ash Templeton. Ash Templeton." She started to cry.

  "That's not true," said Michael. "I acknowledged this creature as my daughter. You know I did. We began to search before we told you about it. We didn't know how sick you would get." His voice was raw, but he swallowed and moistened his dried lips with his tongue, and then he continued: "We didn't know yet how badly you would need the Taltos milk. We only learned that in time. But we tried to contact Ash, and we discovered that he had sold a
ll his holdings. He'd vanished from the banks, the stock exchanges, the world markets."

  "Whatever his feelings for us," Rowan said, "he chose to disappear. He chose to keep his future secret."

  Mona was sobbing against Quinn. It broke Michael's heart to see it.

  Stirling spoke up, his voice assuming a reverent authority:

  "Mona," he said, "the Talamasca began to search for Ash and Morrigan almost immediately. We tried to do it in an unobtrusive way. But we searched. We found some evidence that they had visited Donnelaith. But after that, the trail went cold. And please believe me now when I tell you again: we've never found the slightest trace of them anywhere."

  "That's actually quite surprising," I said.

  "I'm not speaking to you," cried Mona, glaring at me and then drawing close to Quinn as if she was afraid of me.

  "Some evidence of them should have turned up," I said, "no matter what happened to them."

  "That's what I've always thought," said Michael. "For two, three years we lived in dread of their surfacing in some catastrophic way. I can't tell you all my fears. I thought: what if the young ones bred out of control? What if they rose up against Ash? What if they committed murders? And then when we stopped living in fear and started to search, nothing."

  Dolly Jean chuckled again, bringing up her shoulders and letting her head sink down and rocking back and forth. "Walking Babies can kill humans easy as humans can kill Walking Babies. They could be breeding somewhere, breeding like fire, spreading in all directions, hiding in the valleys and the hills, in the mountains and on the plains, traveling over land and sea, and then comes the ringing of a loud bell, and they all walk out all over the world at the same time and they shoot one human being apiece, bang, and they take over the entire planet!"

  "Save that for Tante Oscar," said Rowan under her breath with a cool lift of her eyebrows.