Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

evil your evil and you will do no evil.
I struggled to obey as her mind was broken open. I probed for the murders and I found them, rampant, savage and always over the white powder; and the wealth that had drawn her out of the deep filthy slums of her birth to finery and fortune, to those who toasted her beauty and her cunning; and murder after murder of those as covered in blood as herself.
Yes, love you,
I whispered, love the sheer will and the ever present anger; yes, give it to me, the rage in the warm sweet blood flowing, and suddenly there came, towards me, her unbounded love.
    Without language, she said,
Surrender.
Without language, she said,
I see it!,
and
it
was all of her life, without pagination, and her ripened soul expanded, and there was a terrifying recognition of circumstance and inevitability, her crimes pulled up by the roots from her heart as though by the hand of Heaven.
    But the hunger in me was sated, I was filled by her, I had had her, and I drew back, kissing the puncture wounds, lapping the tiny trickles of blood that I’d spilled, healing the evidence, even as the drowsiness overcame me and then gently, gently I set her down on one of the indifferent chairs. I kissed her lips.
    I knelt down before her. I forced my tongue between her lips and, opening her mouth, I sucked on her tongue and sank my teeth into it delicately, and there came again a small rush of blood.
    Finally there was no more.
    I closed her large empty eyes with my left fingers. I felt her eyes through their lids as her blood washed through me. I bent and kissed her breasts. The blood sent shock after shock through me. I let her go.
    In the usual daze, I turned and saw Lestat waiting, the royal figure, studying me, musing it seemed, his yellow hair looking almost white in the lamplight, his violet eyes wide.
    â€œYou did it right that time, Little Brother,” he said. “You spilled not a single drop.”
    There was so much I wanted to say. I wanted to talk of her life, the great overreaching scope of it that I had so deeply tasted, the score she kept with fate; and how hard I’d tried to do what my Maker had told me to do, not merely to devour the blood but devour the evil, dip my tongue deep down into the evil, but she was beside the point.
    She was a victim. She who had never been a Subject was now Past Tense.
    The blood had me. The warmth had me. The room was a phantasm. Lestat’s woman lay dead on the floor. And there was the suitcase of money, and it meant nothing, could buy nothing, could change nothing, could save no one. The flowers were bold and brilliant, pink lilies dripping with pollen, and dark red roses. The room was complete and final and still.
    â€œNo one will mourn them,” said Lestat softly. His voice seemed distant, beyond my reach. “No need to find a hasty grave.”
    I thought of my Maker. I thought of the dark waters of Sugar Devil Swamp, the thick duckweed, the voice of the owls.
    Something changed in the room, but Lestat didn’t know it.
    â€œCome back to me,” said Lestat. “It’s important, Little Brother, not to let the blood weaken you afterwards, no matter how sweet it is.”
    I nodded. But something was happening. We weren’t alone.
    I could see the dim figure of my double forming behind Lestat. I could see Goblin, designed as I was designed. I could see the crazed smile on his face.
    Lestat pivoted. “Where is he?” he whispered.
    â€œNo, Goblin, I forbid it,” I said. But there was no stopping him. The figure moved towards me with lightning speed, yet held itself together in human form. Right before my eyes he was seemingly as solid as I was; and then I felt the tingling all through my limbs as he merged with me, and the tiny stabs on my hands and my neck and my face. I struggled as if I were caught in a perfect net.
    From deep inside me there came that orgasmic palpitation, that walloping sensation that I was one with him and