Blood Canticle by Anne Rice Page A

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