Anne Rice - Taltos

“Yes!” he confessed without obvious surprise that this woman had recognized his voice.

“Yuri, Aaron Lightner’s dead,” said the woman. “This is Celia, Beatrice’s cousin. Mona’s cousin. Everybody’s cousin. Aaron’s been killed.”

There was a long pause in which Yuri did nothing. He didn’t think or visualize anything or rush to any conclusion. His body was caught in a cold, terrible fear-fear of the implications of these words, that he would never, never see Aaron again, that they would never speak to each other, that he and Aaron-that Aaron was forever gone.

When he tried to move his lips, he found trouble. He did some senseless and stupid little thing with his hand, pinching the telephone cord.

“I’m sorry, Yuri. We’ve been worried about you. Mona’s been very worried. Where are you? Can you call Michael Curry? I can give you the number.”

“I’m all right,” Yuri answered softly. “I have that number.”

“That’s where Mona is now, Yuri. Up at the other house. They will want to know where you are and how you are, and how to reach you immediately.”

“But Aaron …” he said, pleadingly, unable to say more. His voice sounded puny to him, barely escaping the burden of the tremendous emotions that even clouded his vision and his equilibrium, his entire sense of who he was. “Aaron …”

“He was run over, deliberately, by a man in a car. He was walking down from the Pontchartrain Hotel, where he’d just left Beatrice with Mary Jane Mayfair. They were putting Mary Jane Mayfair up at the hotel. Beatrice was just about to go into the lobby of the hotel when she heard the noise. She and Mary Jane witnessed what happened. Aaron was run over by the car several times.”

“Then it was murder,” said Yuri.

“Absolutely. They caught the man who did it. A drifter. He was hired, but he doesn’t know the identity of the man who hired him. He got five thousand dollars in cash for killing Aaron. He’d been trying to do it for a week. He’d spent half the money.”

Yuri wanted to put down the phone. It seemed utterly impossible to continue. He ran his tongue along his upper lip and then firmly forced himself to speak. “Celia, please tell Mona Mayfair this for me, and Michael Curry too-that I am in England, I am safe. I will soon be in touch. I am being very careful. I send my sympathy to Beatrice Mayfair. I send to all … my love.”

“I’ll tell them.”

He laid down the phone. If she said something more, he didn’t hear it. It was silent now. And the soft pastel colors of the bedroom lulled him for a moment. The light filled the mirror softly and beautifully. All the fragrances of the room were clean.

Alienation, a lack of trust either in happiness or in others. Rome. Aaron coming. Aaron erased from life-not from the past, but utterly from the present and from the future.

He didn’t know how long he stood there.

It began to seem that he had been planted by the dressing table for a long, long time. He knew that Ash, the tall one, had come into the room, but not to detach Yuri from the telephone.

And some deep, awful grief in Yuri was touched suddenly, disastrously perhaps, by the warm, sympathetic voice of this man.

“Why are you crying, Yuri?”

It was said with the purity of a child.

“Aaron Lightner’s dead,” said Yuri. “I never called to tell him they’d tried to kill me. I should have told him. I should have warned him-”

It was the slightly abrasive voice of Samuel that reached him from the door.

“He knew, Yuri. He knew. You told me how he warned you not to come back here, how he said they’d come for him at any time.”

“Ah, but I …”

“Don’t hold on to it with guilt, my young friend,” said Ash.

Yuri felt the big, spidery hands close tenderly on his shoulders.

“Aaron … Aaron was my father,” Yuri said in a monotone. “Aaron was my brother. Aaron was my friend.” Inside him the grief and the guilt boiled and the stark, awful terror of death became unendurable. It doesn’t seem possible that this man is gone, totally gone from life, but it will begin to seem more and more possible, and then real, and then absolute.

Yuri might as well have been a boy again, in his mother’s village in Yugoslavia, standing by her dead body on the bed. That had been the last time he’d known such pain as this; he couldn’t bear it. He clenched his teeth, fearing that in an unmanly way he would cry out or even roar.

“The Talamasca killed him,” said Yuri. “Who else would have done it? Lasher-the Taltos-is dead. He didn’t do it. Lay all the murders upon them. The Taltos killed the women, but he did not kill the men. The Talamasca did it.”

“Was it Aaron who killed the Taltos?” asked Ash. “Was he the father?”

“No. But he did love a woman there, and now perhaps her life too has been destroyed.”

He wanted to lock himself in the bathroom. He had no clear image of what he meant to do. Sit on the marble floor, perhaps, with his knees up, and weep.

But neither of these two strange individuals would hear of it. In concern and alarm, they drew him back into the living room of the suite, and seated him on the sofa, the tall one being most careful not to hurt his shoulder, the little man rushing to prepare some hot tea. And bring him cakes and cookies on a plate. A feeble meal, but a particularly enticing one.

It seemed to Yuri that the fire was burning too fast. His pulse had quickened. Indeed, he felt himself breaking out in a sweat: He took off the heavy sweater, pulling it roughly over his neck, causing intense pain in his shoulder before he realized what he was doing, and before he realized he had nothing on under his sweater and was now sitting here bare-chested, with the sweater in his hands. He sat back and hugged the sweater, uncomfortable to be so uncovered.

He heard a little sound. The little man had brought him a white shirt, still wrapped around laundry cardboard. Yuri took it, opened it, unbuttoned it, and slipped it on. It was absurdly too big for him. It must have belonged to Ash. But he rolled up the sleeves and buttoned several of the buttons and was grateful to be concealed once more. It felt comforting, like a great pajama shirt. The sweater lay on the carpet. He could see the grass in it, the twigs and bits of soil clinging to it.

“And I thought I was so noble,” he said, “not calling him, not worrying him, letting the wound heal and getting back on my feet before I reported in, to confirm to him that I was well.”

“Why would the Talamasca kill Aaron Lightner?” asked Ash. He had retreated to his chair and was sitting with his hands clasped between his knees. Again, he was ramrod straight and unlikely and very handsome.

Good Lord, it was as if Yuri had been knocked unconscious, and was seeing all of this again for the first time. He noticed the simple black watchband around Ash’s wrist, and the gold watch itself, with digital numbers. He saw the red-haired hunchback standing at the window, which he had opened a crack now that the fire was positively roaring. He felt the ice blade of the wind cleave through the room. He saw the fire arch its back and hiss.

“Yuri, why?” asked Ash.

“I can’t answer. I had hoped somehow we were mistaken, that they hadn’t had such a heavy hand in all this, that they hadn’t killed innocent men. That it was a fanciful lie or something, that they had the female that they had always wanted. I couldn’t think of such a tawdry purpose. Oh, I don’t mean to offend you-”

“-of course not.”

“I mean, I had thought their aims so lofty, their whole evolution so remarkably pure-an order of scholars who record and study, but never interfere selfishly in what they observe; students of the supernatural. I think I’ve been a fool! They killed Aaron because he knew about all this. And that’s why they must kill me. They must let the Order sink back into its routines, undisturbed by all this. They must be watching at the Motherhouse. They must be anxious to prevent me entering it at all costs. They must have the phones covered. I couldn’t call there or Amsterdam or Rome if I wanted to. They’d intercept any fax that I sent. They’ll never let down this guard, or stop looking for me, till I’m dead.