Lasher

by Anne Rice

  The investigation of the Mayfair Witches is now in the hands of Erich Stolov and Clement Norgan, as well as several other men who have worked with these two in other parts of the world. They will proceed to make contact with the family--without your assistance and with full disclosure that you are no longer connected with us and that they are not connected with you.

  We are asking you only this: do not interfere with what must be done. We release you from all obligation. But you must not become an obstacle to what we have to do.

  It is a great and pressing concern to us that the being called Lasher be found. Our members have their orders. Please understand that henceforth you will not be given any special consideration by them.

  At some point in the future, we invite you both to return to the Motherhouse, to discuss with us in detail (through written communication) your defection and the possibility of your rededication and renewal of your vows.

  At this time, we must say farewell on behalf of your brothers and sisters in the Talamasca, on behalf of Anton Marcus, the new Superior General, on behalf of all of us who love you and value you and are saddened that you are no longer in the fold.

  Please take note at the appropriate time and through the appropriate channels that ample funds have been deposited in your accounts to cover severance expenses. This is the last material support you will receive from...

  The Talamasca

  Yuri folded the slick pages, and slipped his copy into his jacket pocket right alongside of the gun.

  He looked up at Aaron, who seemed calm, unconcerned, deep in thought.

  "Is this my fault?" asked Yuri. "That you are excommunicated so quickly? Should I not have come?"

  "No, don't let the word chill your heart. I was excommunicated because I refused to leave here. I was excommunicated because I would not stop sending queries to Amsterdam as to what was actually going on. I was excommunicated because I ceased to 'watch and be always here.' I'm glad you're here, because now I feel anxiety for all my fellow members. I don't know how to tell them. But you, you who were the dearest to me, besides David, you are here and you know what I know."

  "How do you mean that you are frightened for the other members?"

  "I am not an Elder," said Aaron. "I am seventy-nine years old but I am not an Elder." He looked at Yuri.

  Of course this simple admission was a flagrant violation of the rules.

  Aaron went on: "David Talbot was never an Elder. He told me so before he...left the Order. He told me that he had never spoken with anyone who was an Elder, indeed, he had obtained many a surreptitious and frequent denial from the older ones--they weren't Elders. They didn't know who the Elders were."

  Yuri didn't answer. All his life, since the age of twelve, he had lived with the idea that the Elders were his brethren, a jury, so to speak, of his peers.

  "Precisely," said Aaron. "And now I don't know who they are or what their motives are. I think they killed a doctor in San Francisco. I believe they killed Dr. Samuel Larkin. I believe that they have used people like me all our lives--to gather information for some occult purpose that was never understood or appreciated by those of my generation. That is the only thing I can believe."

  Yuri again didn't reply. But this was a full and eloquent expression of his own suspicions--the deep sinister feelings which had come over him not long after his return to the Motherhouse from Donnelaith.

  "If I try now to access the main files, I'll be denied," he said, sort of thinking aloud.

  "Possibly," said Aaron. "Not everyone in the Order knows computers as you know them, Yuri. If you know the access code of any other member."

  "I know several," he said. "I should go at once to some place where I can make the calls. I should find out anything else that is there--cross-referenced in any conceivable way. It will take me two days or more to do this. I can go into the Latin which has been scanned and collated. I can use search words. There is much perhaps I could find out."

  "They might have thought of all that. They must have. But it's worth a try. My mind is too old for it, and so are my fingers. But there is a computer modem with a phone in the house on Amelia Street. It belongs to Mona Mayfair. She's given permission for you to use it. She says you'll figure it out. It's DOS. You understand this? DOS?"

  Yuri laughed softly. "You make it sound like a Druidic god. It means the operating system of the computer, that it is IBM-compatible. Yes."

  "She said she left some instructions for you on the contents of the hard drive but you could boot a directory and see it all for yourself. She said her own files are locked."

  "I know of Mona and her computer," said Yuri softly. "I would not go into her files."

  "It was her meaning that you could access anything else."

  "I see."

  "There are dozens of computer modem systems at Mayfair and Mayfair. I believe Mona's is the best, however--the state of the art."

  Yuri nodded. "I'm going to do that immediately." He drank another stiff cup of the smooth rich coffee. He remembered Mona with uncommon warmth. "And then we can talk."

  "Yes, talk."

  But what would they say? They were too crestfallen to say much of anything. In fact, a terrible gloom hovered near Yuri ready to descend in full force, rather like the gloom when the gypsies had taken him from his dead mother. Strangers. A world full of strangers. Except for Aaron, and these kindly people, this Mona whom he liked already very much.

  At Amelia Street, Yuri had met Mona today, sometime around noon. He'd been eating American dry cereal with milk at the breakfast table. She had talked to him nonstop, questioning him, chatting with him, all to one purpose or another as she gnawed on an apple till there was perhaps one seed left.

  The entire family was electric with the news that she would be the next designee of the legacy. They had come up to her continuously, paying court to her, doing everything but asking to kiss her ring. But then she did not have a ring.

  Finally Mona had said, "How can we carry on this way when Rowan is still alive?"

  And Randall, the huge, soft old man with the many chins, had said: "Darling, that's got nothing to do with it. Whether she lives or dies, Rowan is now incapable of ever bearing another child."

  Mona had looked stunned, then only nodded, and whispered, "Of course."

  "Don't you want the legacy?" asked Yuri under his breath, because she sat there so silent, and so close to him, looking into his eyes.

  She laughed and laughed. Nothing mean and ugly in it. It was light and pretty.

  "Ryan will explain it all, Mona," one of the young men had said. Was it Gerald? "But you can hit those legal documents yourself any time you want."

  A dreadful dark look had come over Mona's face. "What was that saying?" she had asked. "St. Francis said it? Oncle Julien used to say it. Ancient Evelyn told me. Mom said it. 'Be careful what you wish for...your wish might come true.' "

  "Sounds like Oncle Julien, Ancient Evelyn and St. Francis," said Gerald.

  Then Mona had departed with the swift and amazing American drawl of: "I gotta hit the computer. Out of my way." The computer.

  When Yuri had gone to get his valise, he had heard the keys clicking. Front room. He had not dared to walk down the hall and meddle in the open door.

  "I like Mona Mayfair," he said now to Aaron. "That is a clever one. I like them all."

  He felt a sudden unwelcome flush in his cheeks. He did more than like her. Hmm. But she was too young. Wasn't she too young?

  He stood to go. Such a lovely house. He was aware, perhaps for the first time, of the fragrances coming from the kitchen.

  "Not so quickly," said Aaron.

  "Aaron, they will lock everything!"

  Beatrice had just come in. She held a tweed jacket over her arm, one of Aaron's, worn and loved. And the raincoat for Yuri.

  "We want you to stay for supper," said Beatrice. "It will be ready in half an hour. It's a very special supper to us. Aaron will be brokenhearted if you go away. I will be bro
kenhearted if you go away. Here, put this on."

  "We are having supper here but we are leaving?" asked Yuri, as he took the black raincoat from her hand.

  "We're going to the Cathedral," said Aaron. He slipped on the tweed coat and straightened the thick lapels. He checked for his linen handkerchief. How many times had Yuri watched this procedure? Now Aaron checked his pockets for his keys, and his passport and another piece of paper, which he unfolded as he looked at Beatrice and smiled.

  "Come with us and witness the marriage," said Beatrice. "Magdalene and Lily will meet us there."

  "Ah, you are really to be married!"

  "Yes, darling," said Beatrice. "Let's be off. The supper will be ruined if we keep it waiting too long. This is a Mayfair recipe, Yuri. You appreciate spicy food, I hope? This is crawfish etouffee."

  "Thank you, Yuri," said Aaron softly.

  She slipped into her own dark jacket, which made the shirt-waist silk dress look suddenly very formal and sedate.

  "Ah, this is a privilege," said Yuri. For this he would wait for Mona's computer, hard as that would be.

  "You know," said Beatrice, leading the way, "it's a shame to forgo the big wedding. When all this is over maybe we'll have a banquet, Aaron, what do you think? When everyone is happy and it's all over, we'll have the most splendid party! But the fact is, I will not wait." She shook her head. Then she said again with just a hint of panic, "I will not wait."

  Thirty-one

  HE CHOSE HIS moments for bathroom breaks. Made sure the nurse was standing right there. Then he walked the four steps into the bathroom, shut the door, did what he had to do and came back again.

  His worst fear was that while he was taking a piss, she would die. While he was washing his hands, she would die. While he was talking on the phone, she would die.

  His hands were still wet now; he hadn't taken time to dry them. He sat down in the wing chair and looked across the room, at the old wallpaper above the fireplace, an oriental pattern of a willow and a stream. They had so reverently left it when they refurbished. Just that one old panel, the chimney panel. All the rest of the room was fresh and new, surrounding the high antique bed with swaddling comfort.

  She lay as before, light glinting in her motionless eyes.

  This evening around eight, they had run all the grams again, as he called them. Electroencephalo and electrocardio and so forth and so on. Her heartbeat was no stronger than it had been when she was first found. Her brain was as dead as a brain can get and still have life in it. Her soft, delicate face with its beautiful cheekbones was a bit more ruddy. She didn't have the dried-out look anymore. He could see the result of the fluids, especially around her eyes, and in her normal-looking hands. Mona said it didn't look like Rowan. It was Rowan.

  Pray you are in some soft and beautiful valley, safe from knowing. Pray our thoughts can't touch you. Only our comforting hands.

  They had put a big rose-colored wing chair in the corner for him, between the bed and the bathroom door. There was the chest of drawers there to the right with his cigarettes and with his ashtray and also with the gun Mona had given him, a big heavy .357 Magnum that had belonged to Gifford. Ryan had brought it home from Destin two days before.

  "You keep this. That way if the son of a bitch comes into this room, you can pop him," Mona had said.

  "Yes, I got it," he said. He had wanted just such a weapon, "a simple tool" to use the phrase of Julien, to use the phrase of his many revelations. Just a simple tool to blow away the face of the being who had done this to her.

  At moments, his time spent with Julien in the attic was more real than anything else. He had not tried to tell anyone else but Mona. He really wanted to tell Aaron. But the maddening thing was, he couldn't get a moment alone with Aaron. Aaron was so angry about the suspect involvement of the Talamasca that he was spending every hour elsewhere, checking on things, verifying, whatever. Except of course for the brief wedding in the sacristy of the Cathedral, which Michael had been compelled to miss.

  "Downtown Mayfairs marry at the Cathedral," Mona had explained.

  Mona was asleep now in the front bedroom, on the bed which had been his and Rowan's. It must be exhausting to go from being a fairly poor relation to the Queen in the Castle, he thought.

  But the family was losing no time in designating Mona. It was a matter of expediency. Never had the family known such turmoil and jeopardy. There had been more "change" in the last six months than ever in the family's history, including the revolution in the 1700s in Saint-Domingue. The family intended to lock up the matter of the designee before any of the cousins could challenge it, before any internecine war began among divisions of descendants. And Mona was a child, a child whom they knew and loved and felt that they could ultimately control.

  Michael had smiled at that bit of frank explanation which had dropped so naively from Pierce's lips.

  "The family's going to control Mona?" Michael had murmured.

  But they were in the hall, right outside Rowan's door, and he hadn't wanted to talk about all this. He had his eye on Rowan. He could see the rise and fall of her breath. A person on a respirator could not have been so regular.

  "This is what's important," said Pierce. "Mona is the right person. Everyone knows this for various different reasons. She'll have a few crazy schemes, it's bound to happen, but Mona is basically very smart and mentally sound."

  Interesting, those words, mentally sound. Were there many people in the family who were flat-out crazy? Probably.

  "What Dad wants you to know," Pierce had continued, "is that this is your house till the day you die. It's Rowan's house. If there should be some kind of miracle, I mean if..."

  "I know..."

  "Then everything reverts to Rowan, with Mona designated as the heir. Even if Rowan could speak now, this would have to be decided, who would be the heir. All those years when Deirdre was in her famous rocker, we knew that Rowan Mayfair in California was the heir. Also those were the days of Carlotta. We couldn't make her cooperate. This time we will do things immediately and smoothly and efficiently. I know to you it must seem very strange..."

  "Not so strange," he'd said. "I want to go back in. It makes me edgy to leave her."

  "Sometime or other you'll have to sleep."

  "I sleep, son, I sleep right there in the chair. I'm fine. I sleep better than I did when I was on all that medicine. It's kind of deep and natural. I sleep holding her hand."

  And I try not to think, Rowan, why the hell did you leave me? Why did you drive me out on Christmas Eve? Why didn't you trust me? And Aaron, why the hell didn't you break the laws of the Talamasca and come here? But that wasn't fair. Aaron himself had explained that situation--how they had given him his orders to stay away, and how guilty, how spineless, he had felt.

  "I sat there at Oak Haven giving you all those excuses. I let you return to the house alone. I should have trusted my own conscience. Dear God, it's the old dilemma." Aaron's entire loyalty to the Talamasca was now in question. Thank God that he loved Beatrice, that she loved him. What would become of a man like that, cast out of the Talamasca? Hell, the handsome gypsy with the jet-black eyes and the golden skin was young.

  He closed his eyes.

  He knew the nurse was fiddling with the IV again. He could hear her, and hear the little beeps which came from the electronic control. How he hated these machines, machines which had surrounded him in the cardiac unit for so long.

  And now she lay there at their mercy, she who had taken so many people through the techno-medical vale of tears.

  Whatever happened, she had suffered for it unspeakably, and he had made his vow. When that thing was found, he would kill it. Nobody would stop him. He would kill it. He would not hesitate for the sake of any legal or religious authority, or any family pressure or any moral qualm. He would kill it. That had been Julien's message. You will have one more chance.

  And as soon as he could leave this bedside without worrying, as soon as he really knew th
at Rowan was stable, he'd go looking for it himself.

  It had failed to couple with its daughters...the Mayfair Witches. It had chosen those who did possess the extra chromosomes, but the births had failed. How had he known his brides--by scent, perhaps, or something visible which others didn't see? For massive irregularities had been found in Gifford and in Alicia, and in Edith, and in the two cousins in Houston.

  Would he now seek a mate at random? Who could know.

  Michael was in terror of the news--another rash of inexplicable deaths. An unknown disease surfacing suddenly in the headlines. Women on slabs in Dallas or Oklahoma City, or New York. Imagine it, this tall blue-eyed creature, bringing death with his embrace. For without exception, his deadly semen had caused them to ovulate instantly, for the egg then to be fertilized and for the embryo to grow out of control.

  All that was known now from the analysis of the doctors. It was also known that he, Michael, had the chromosomes, though they were inactive. And so did Mona, in whom they were also inactive, and so did Paige Mayfair from New York, and so did Ancient Evelyn and Gerald and Ryan himself.

  The family was handling it fairly well, as far as he was concerned, though there was much discussion now as to whether Clancy and Pierce should marry, for both of them had the extra complement, too.

  And what was he to do with Mona? Did he dare touch Mona again? They both had the abnormality. How significant was it? How much of Lasher's birth had been chromosomal, and how much his soul sliding in there and taking over? What right had Michael to be touching Mona anyway? That was all past. It was past the minute he saw Rowan lying on the stretcher. Past, past, past. He'd had enough fun in life. He could sit in that chair forever. Just be with her.

  However, there were good arguments for ignoring the genetic analysis, said the doctors, at least for Clancy and Pierce to trust to "nature," whatever that might truly be. Pierce's sisters did not have the extra-long double helix. They had extra genes, but it simply wasn't the same. Ryan and Gifford, both with extra genes, had failed to produce a monster. Michael had had lovers. Yes, and if years ago his girlfriend hadn't chosen an abortion against his heartfelt wishes, he might have had a normal child.