Taltos

by Anne Rice

  The Taltos was staring coldly at the little man.

  Yuri resumed his story.

  "Aaron Lightner went to help the Mayfair witches in their endless battles with the spirit Lasher. Aaron Lightner never knew whence this spirit came, or what it really was. That a witch had called it up in Donnelaith in the year 1665--that was known, but not much else about it.

  "After the creature was made flesh, after it had caused the deaths of too many witches for me to count--only after all this did Aaron Lightner see the creature and learn from its own lips that it was the Taltos, and that it had lived in a body before, in the time of King Henry, meeting its death in Donnelaith, the glen which it haunted until the witch called it up.

  "These things are not in any Talamasca file known to me. Scarcely three weeks have passed since the creature was slaughtered. But these things may be in secret files known to someone. Once the Talamasca learnt that Lasher had been reincarnated, or whatever in the name of God we should call it, they moved in on him and sought to remove him for their own purposes. They may have coldly and deliberately taken several lives in the process. I don't know. I know that Aaron had no part in their schemes, and felt betrayed by them. That is why I'm asking you: Do they know about you? Are you part of the Talamasca knowledge, because if you are, it is highly occult knowledge."

  "Yes and no," said the tall one. "You don't tell lies at all, do you?"

  "Ash, try not to say strange things," grumbled the dwarf. He too had sat back, letting his short, stumpy legs stretch out perfectly straight. He had knitted his fingers on his tweed vest, and his shirt was open at the neck. A bit of light flashed in his hooded eyes.

  "I was merely remarking on it, Samuel. Have some patience." The tall man sighed. "Try not to say such strange things yourself." He looked a little annoyed and then his eyes returned to Yuri.

  "Let me answer your question, Yuri," he said. The way he had spoken the name was warm and casual. "Men in the Talamasca today probably know nothing of me. It would take a genius to unearth what tales of us are told in Talamasca archives, if indeed such documents still exist. I never fully understood the status or the significance of this knowledge--the Order's files, as they call them now. I read some manuscript once, centuries ago, and laughed and laughed at the words in it. But in those times all written language seemed naive and touching to me. Some of it still does."

  To Yuri, this was a fascinating point. The dwarf had been right, of course; he was falling under the sway of this being, he had lost his healthy reluctance to trust, but that was what this sort of love was about, wasn't it? Divesting oneself so totally of the customary feelings of alienation and distrust that the subsequent acceptance was intellectually orgasmic.

  "What sort of language doesn't make you laugh?" asked Yuri.

  "Modern slang," said the tall one. "Realism in fiction, and journalism which is filled with colloquialisms. It often lacks naivete completely. It has lost all formality, and instead abides by an intense compression. When people write now, it is sometimes like the screech of a whistle compared to the songs they used to sing."

  Yuri laughed. "I think you're right," he said. "Not so the documents of the Talamasca, however."

  "No. As I was explaining, they are melodic and amusing."

  "But then there are documents and documents. So you don't think they know about you now."

  "I'm fairly certain they don't know about me, and as you tell your tale, it becomes very clear that they cannot possibly know about me. But go on. What happened to this Taltos?"

  "They tried to take him away, and they died in the process. The man who killed the Taltos killed these men from the Talamasca. Before they died, however, when these men were seeking to take the Taltos into their custody, you might say, they indicated that they had a female Taltos, that they had for centuries sought to bring the male and the female together. They indicated it was the avowed purpose of the Order. The clandestine and occult purpose, I should say. This was demoralizing to Aaron Lightner."

  "I can see why."

  Yuri went on.

  "The Taltos, Lasher, he seemed unsurprised by all this; he seemed to have figured it out. Even in his earlier incarnation, the Talamasca had tried to take him out of Donnelaith, perhaps to mate him with the female. But he didn't trust them and he didn't go with them. He was a priest in those days. He was believed to be a saint."

  "St. Ashlar," said the dwarf more soberly, the voice seeming to rumble not from the wrinkles of his face but from his heavy trunk. "St. Ashlar, who always comes again."

  The tall one bowed his head slightly, his deep hazel eyes moving slowly back and forth across the carpet, almost as if he were reading the rich Oriental design. He looked up at Yuri, head bowed, so that his dark brows shadowed his eyes.

  "St. Ashlar," he said in a sad voice. "Are you this man?"

  "I'm no saint, Yuri. Do you mind that I call you by name? Let's not speak of saints, if you please...."

  "Oh, please do call me Yuri. And I will call you Ash? But the point is, are you this same individual? This one they called the saint? You speak of centuries! And we sit here in this parlor, and the fire crackles, and the waiter taps at the door now with our refreshments. You must tell me. I can't protect myself from my own brothers in the Talamasca if you don't tell me and help me to understand what's going on."

  Samuel slipped off the chair and proceeded towards the alcove. "Go into the bedroom, please, Yuri. Out of sight now." He swaggered as he went past Yuri.

  Yuri rose, the shoulder hurting him acutely for a moment, and he walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. He found himself in a shadowy stillness, with soft, loose curtains filtering the subdued morning light. He picked up the telephone; quickly he punched the direct-dial number, followed by the country code for the United States.

  Then he hesitated, feeling wholly unable to tell the protective lies that he would have to tell to Mona, eager to speak to Aaron and tell him what he knew, and half afraid he would be momentarily stopped from calling anyone.

  Several times on the drive down from Scotland, he had found himself at public phones, experiencing the same dilemma, when the dwarf had commanded him to get in the car now.

  What to tell his little love? How much to tell Aaron in the few moments he might have to speak with him?

  In haste, he punched in the area code for New Orleans, and the number of the Mayfair house on St. Charles and Amelia, and he waited, a little worried suddenly that it might be the very middle of the night in America, and then realizing suddenly that indeed it was.

  Rude and terrible mistake, whatever the circumstances. Someone had answered. It was a voice he knew but could not place.

  "I'm calling from England. I'm so sorry. I'm trying to reach Mona Mayfair," he said. "I hope I haven't waked the house."

  "Yuri?" asked the woman.

  "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.

  "Then who will there be to go after them? To tell the others? To reveal the awful secret to the brothers and sisters that this Order is evil ... that the old maxims of the Catholic Church perhaps have always been true. What is supernatural and not of God is evil. To find the male Taltos! To bring him together with the female ..."

  He looked up. Ash's face was sad. Samuel, leaning against the closed window, appeared, for all the fleshy folds of his face, sad and concerned as well. Calm yourself, he thought, make your words count. Do not lapse into hysteria.

  He went on. "You speak of centuries, Ash," he said, "the way others speak of years. Then the female within the Talamasca might have lived for centuries. This might have been the only purpose always. Out of dark times, a web spun that is so evil and so perverse that modern men and women can't even conceive of it! It's too simple, all of these stupid men and women watching out for one single being--a Taltos, a creature that can breed with its mate so fast and so successfully that its kind would quickly overtake the world. I wonder what makes them so sure of themselves, the invisible and anonymous and secretive Elders of the Order, so sure that they themselves are not being--"

  He paused. It had never occurred to him. Of course. Had he ever been in a room with a se
ntient being who wasn't human? Now he was, and who was to say how many such species lived in our comfortable little world, walking about, passing for human while servicing their own agenda in every respect? Taltos. Vampire. The aged dwarf, with his own clock and his own grudges and stories.

  How quiet they both were. Had there been an unspoken decision to let him rave?

  "You know what I would like to do?" Yuri asked. "What?" asked Ash.

  "Go to the Amsterdam Motherhouse and kill them, the Elders. But that's just it, I don't think I can find them. I don't think they are in the Amsterdam Motherhouse, or that they ever have been. I don't know who or what they are. Samuel, I want to take the car now. I have to go home here in London. I have to see the brothers and the sisters."

  "No," said Samuel. "They'll kill you."

  "They can't all be in it. That's my last hope; we are all dupes of a few. Now, please, I want to take the car outside London to the Motherhouse. I want to walk inside quickly, before anyone is the wiser, and grab hold of the brothers and sisters, and make them listen. Look, I have to do this! I have to warn them. Why, Aaron's dead!"

  He stopped. He realized he'd been frightening them, these two strange friends. The little man had his arms folded again, grotesquely, because they were so short and his chest was so big. The folded flesh of his forehead had descended in a frown. Ash merely watched him, not frowning, but visibly worrying.

  "What do you care, either one of you!" said Yuri suddenly. "You saved my life when I was shot in the mountains. But nobody asked you to do this. Why? What am I to you?"

  A little noise came from Samuel, as if to say, This is not worth an answer. Ash answered, however, in a tender voice.

  "Maybe we are gypsies, too, Yuri," he said.

  Yuri didn't answer, but he did not believe in the sentiments this man was describing. He didn't believe in anything, except that Aaron was dead. He pictured Mona, his little red-haired witch. He saw her, her remarkable little face and her great veil of red hair. He saw her eyes. But he could feel nothing for her. He wished with all his heart that she were here.

  "Nothing, I have nothing," he whispered.

  "Yuri," said Ash. "Please mark what I tell you. The Talamasca was not founded to search for the Taltos. This you can believe on my word. And though I know nothing of the Elders of the Order in this day and age, I have known them in the past; and no, Yuri, they were not Taltos then and I cannot believe they are Taltos now. What would they be, Yuri, females of our species?"