Anne Rice - The witching hour

Its flesh throbbed under her fingers, living, breathing through its pores. Its cries grew hoarser, deeper, echoing as she dropped down out of consciousness and rose up again, her other hand groping in the dark and finding his forehead, finding the thick mass of manly curls, finding his eyes fluttering under her palm, finding his mouth now half closed with the sobs coming out of it, finding his chest, and the heart beneath it and the long muscular arms flopping against the boards, yes, this thing so big now that she could lay her head on its pumping chest, and the cock between his legs, yes, and the thighs, yes, and struggling upwards, she lay on top of him, both hands on him, feeling the rise and fall of his breath beneath her, the lungs enlarging, filling, the heart pumping, and dark silky hair sprouting around his cock, and then it was a web again, a web shining in the darkness, full of chemistry and mystery and certainty, and she sank down into the blackness, into the quiet.

A voice was talking to her, intimate and soft.

“Stop the blood.”

She couldn’t answer.

“You’re bleeding. Stop the blood.”

“I don’t want to live,” she said. Surely the house was burning. Come, old woman, with your lamp. Light the drapes.

Lemle said, “I never said it wasn’t possible, you know. The thing is that once an advance has been envisioned, it is inevitable. Millions of cells. The embryo is the key to immortality.”

“You can still kill him,” said Petyr. He was standing over her, looking down at her.

“They’re figments of your imagination, of your conscience.”

“Am I dying?”

“No.” He laughed. Such a soft silky laugh. “Can you hear me? I am laughing, Rowan. I can laugh now.”

Take me to hell now. Let me die.

“No, my darling, my precious beautiful darling, stop the bleeding.”

The sunlight waked her. She lay on the living room floor, on the soft Chinese rug, and her first thought was the house had not burned. The awful heat had not consumed it. Somehow it had been saved.

For a moment she didn’t understand what she was seeing.

A man was sitting beside her, looking down at her, and he had the smooth unblemished skin of a baby-over the structure of a man’s face, but it resembled her face. She had never seen a human being who looked this much like her. But there were definite differences. His eyes were large and blue and fringed with black lashes, and his hair was black like Michael’s hair. It was Michael’s hair. Michael’s hair and Michael’s eyes. But he was slender like her. His smooth hairless chest was narrow as her chest had been in childhood, with two shining pink nipples, and his arms were narrow, though finely muscled, and the delicate fingers of his hand, with which he stroked his lip thoughtfully as he looked at her, were narrow and like her fingers.

But he was bigger man she was, as big as a man. And the dried mucus and blood was all over him, like a dark ruby red map covering him.

She felt a moan coming up out of her throat, pushing against her lips. Her whole body moved with it, and suddenly she screamed. Rising off the boards, she screamed. Louder, longer, more wildly than she had ever screamed last night in all her fear. She was this scream, leaving herself, leaving everything she’d seen and remembered in total horror.

His hand came down over her mouth, pushing her flat against the rug. She couldn’t move. The scream was turning around inside, like vomit that could choke her. A deep convulsion of pain moved through her. She lay limp, silent.

He leaned over her. “Don’t do it,” he whispered. The old voice. Of course, his voice, with his unmistakable inflection.

His smooth face looked perfectly innocent, a picture of astonishment with its flawless and radiant cheeks, and its smooth narrow nose, and the great blue eyes blinking at her. Snapping open and closed like the eyes of the manikin on the table in her dreams. He smiled. “I need you,” he said. “I love you. And I’m your child.”

After a while, he took his hand away.

She sat up. Her nightgown was soaked with blood and dry and stiff with it. The smell of blood was everywhere. Like the smell of the Emergency Room.

She scooted back on the rug and sat forward, her knee crooked, peering at him.

Nipples, perfect, yes, cock perfect, yes, though the real test would come when it was hard. Hair perfect, yes, but what about inside? What about every precise little interlocking part?

She drew closer, staring at his shoulders, watching the rise and fall of his chest with his breath, then looking into his eyes, not seeing him look back, not caring if he did, just studying the texture of the flesh and the lips.

She laid her hand on his chest and listened. A strong, steady rhythm coming from him.

He didn’t move to stop her as she laid her hands on both sides of his skull. Soft, like a baby’s skull, able to heal after blows that would kill a man of twenty-five. God, but how long was it going to be that way?

She put her finger against his lower lip, opening his mouth and staring at his tongue. Then she sat back, her hands lying limp on her folded legs.

“Are you hurting?” he asked her. His voice was very tender. He narrowed his eyes, and for just a second there was a little bit of mature expression in the face, and then it returned to baby wonder. “You lost so much blood.”

For a long moment she stared at him in silence.

He waited, merely watching her.

“No, I’m not hurt,” she murmured. Again she stared at him for the longest time. “I need things,” she said finally. “I need a microscope. I need to take blood samples. I need to see what the tissues really are now! God, I need all these things! I need a fully equipped laboratory. And we’ve got to leave here.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “That should be the very next thing that we do. Leave here.”

“Can you stand up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re going to try,” She climbed to her knees, and then grasping the edge of the marble mantel, climbed to her feet.

She took his hand, nice tight grip. “Come on, stand up, don’t think about it, just do it, call on your body to know, the musculature is there, that’s what differentiates you completely from a newborn, you have the skeleton and musculature of a man.”

“All right, I’ll try,” he said. He looked frightened and also strangely delighted. Shuddering, he struggled to his knees first, as she had done, and then to his feet, only to tumble backwards, catching himself from falling with one hasty back step after another.

“Ooooh … ” He sang it out. “I’m walking, I am, I’m walking … ”

She rushed towards him and wrapped her arm around him and let him cling to her. He grew quiet looking down at her, and then raised his hand and stroked her cheek, the gesture imperfectly coordinated, rather like a drunken gesture, but the fingers silky and tingling.

“My beautiful Rowan,” he said. “Look, the tears are rising in my eyes. Real tears. Oh, Rowan.”

He tried to stand freely and to bend down to kiss her. She caught him and steadied him as his lips closed over hers, and that same powerful sensual shock passed through her that had always come with his touch.

“Rowan,” he moaned aloud, crushing her against him, then slipping backwards until she brought him up short again in her arms.

“Come, we haven’t much time,” she said. “We have to find some place safe, some place completely unknown … ”

“Yes, darling, yes … but you see it’s all so new and so beautiful. Let me hold you again, let me kiss you … ”

“There isn’t time,” she said, but the silken baby lips had clamped on hers again, and she felt his cock pressing against her sex, pressing into the soreness. She pulled away, drawing him after her.