The Tale of the Body Thief (57 page)

“I want it,” he said, but how strained his voice was, how dark, how without that bright lyric note. “I want it more than you can know. Do it now, please. Don’t prolong my agony. Come to me. What can I do to invite you? To assure you? Oh, I’ve had longer than you
know to brood on this decision. Remember how long I’ve known your secrets, all of you.”

How strange his face looked, how hard his eyes, and how stiff and bitter his mouth.

“David, something is wrong,” I said. “I know it is. Listen to me. We must talk it out together. It is the most crucial conversation perhaps that we will ever have. What’s happened to make you want it? What was it? Our time on the island together? Spell it out for me. I must understand.”

“You waste time, Lestat.”

“Oh, but for this, one must take time, David, it’s the very last time that time really matters.”

I drew closer to him, deliberately letting his scent fill my nostrils, deliberately letting the scent of his blood come to me, and awaken the desire in me which cared little who he was or what I was—the sharp hunger for him that wanted only his death. The thirst twisted and snapped inside me like a great whip.

He stepped backwards. I saw fear in his eyes.

“No, don’t be frightened. You think I would hurt you? How could I have beaten that stupid little Body Thief if it hadn’t been for you?”

His face stiffened all over, eyes becoming smaller, his mouth stretching in what seemed a grimace. Why, how dreadful and unlike himself he looked. What in God’s name was going on in his mind? Everything was wrong about this moment, this decision! There was no joy, no intimacy. It was wrong.

“Open to me!” I whispered.

He shook his head, eyes flashing as they narrowed again. “Won’t it happen when the blood flows?” Brittle, his voice!

“Give me an image, Lestat, to hold in mind. An image to hold against fear.”

I was confused. I wasn’t sure I knew what he meant.

“Shall I think of you and how beautiful you are,” he said tenderly, “and that we shall be together, companions always? Will that bring me through?”

“Think of India,” I whispered. “Think of the mangrove forest, and when you were most happy … ”

I wanted to say more, I wanted to say, no, not that, but I didn’t
know why! And the hunger surged in me, and the burning loneliness mingled with it, and once again I saw Gretchen, saw the pure horror in her face. I moved closer to him. David, David at last
 … Do it!
and be done with talking, what do the images matter, do it! What’s wrong with you that you fear to do it?

And this time I caught him firmly in my embrace.

There came his fear again, a spasm, but he did not truly struggle against me, and I savored it for one moment, this lush physical intimacy, the tall regal body in my arms. I let my lips move over his dark gray hair, breathing in the familiar fragrance, I let my fingers cradle his head. And then my teeth broke through the surface of the skin before I meant to do it and the hot salted blood flowed over my tongue and filled my mouth.

David, David at last
.

In a torrent the images came—the great forests of India, and the great gray elephants thundering past, knees lifted awkwardly, giant heads wagging, tiny ears flapping like loose leaves. Sunlight striking the forest.
Where is the tiger? Oh, dear God, Lestat, you are the tiger! You’ve done it to him! That’s why you didn’t want him to think of this!
And in a flash I saw him staring at me in the sunlit glade, David of years ago in splendid youth, smiling, and suddenly, for a split second, superimposed upon the image, or springing from within it like an unfolding flower, there appeared another figure, another man. It was a thin, emaciated creature with white hair, and cunning eyes. And I knew, before it vanished once more into the faltering and lifeless image of David, that it had been James!

This man in my arms was James!

I hurled him backwards, hand up to wipe the spilling blood from my lips.

“James!” I roared.

He fell against the side of the bed, eyes dazed, blood trickling onto his collar, one hand flung out against me. “Now don’t be hasty!” he cried in that old familiar cadence of his own, chest heaving, sweat gleaming on his face.

“Damn you into hell,” I roared again, staring at those frenzied glittering eyes in David’s face.

I lunged at him, hearing a sudden spurt from him of desperate crazed laughter, and more slurred and hurried words.

“You fool! It’s Talbot’s body! You don’t want to hurt Talbot’s—”

But it was too late. I tried to stop myself but my hand had closed around his throat, and I’d already flung the body at the wall!

In horror, I saw him slam into the plaster. I saw the blood splatter from the back of his head, and I heard the ugly crunch of the broken wall behind him, and when I reached out to catch him, he fell directly into my arms. In a wide bovine stare he looked at me, his mouth working desperately to make the words come out.

“Look what you’ve done, you fool, you idiot. Look what … look what … ”

“Stay in that body, you little monster!” I said between my clenched teeth. “Keep it alive!”

He was gasping. A thin tiny stream of blood poured out of his nose and down into his mouth. His eyes rolled. I held him up, but his feet were dangling as if he were paralyzed. “You … you fool … call Mother, call her … Mother, Mother, Raglan needs you … Don’t call Sarah. Don’t tell Sarah. Call Mother—” And then, he lost consciousness, head flopping forward as I held him and then laid him down on the bed.

I was frantic. What was I to do! Could I heal his wounds with my blood! No, the wound was inside, in his head, in his brain! Ah, God! The brain. David’s brain!

I grabbed up the telephone, stammered the number of the room and that there was an emergency. A man was badly hurt. A man had fallen. A man had had a stroke! They must get an ambulance for this man at once.

Then I put down the phone and went back to him. David’s face and body lying helplessly there! His eyelids were fluttering, and his left hand opened, and then closed, and opened again. “Mother,” he whispered. “Get Mother. Tell her Raglan needs her … Mother.”

“She’s coming,” I said, “you must wait for her!” Gently, I turned his head to the side. But in truth what did it matter? Let him fly up and out of it if he could! This body wasn’t going to recover! This body could be no fit host to David ever again!

And where the hell was David!

Blood was spreading all over the coverlet of the bed. I bit into my wrist. I let the drops fall on the puncture wounds in the neck. Maybe a few drops on the lips would help somehow. But what could I do about the brain! Oh, God, how could I have done it … 

“Foolish,” he whispered, “so foolish. Mother!”

The left hand began to flop from side to side on the bed. Then I saw that his entire left arm was jerking, and indeed, the left side of his mouth was pulling to the side over and over again in the same repetitive pattern, as his eyes stared upwards and pupils ceased to move. The blood continued to flow from the nose and down into the mouth and over the white teeth.

“Oh, David, I didn’t mean to do it,” I whispered. “Oh, Lord God, he’s going to die!”

I think he said the word “Mother” once more.

But I could hear the sirens now, screaming towards Ocean Drive. Someone was pounding on the door. I slipped to the side as it was flung open, and I darted from the room, unseen. Other mortals were rushing up the stairway. They saw no more than a quick shadow as I passed. I stopped once in the lobby, and in a daze I watched the clerks scurrying about. The awful scream of the siren grew louder. I turned and all but stumbled out the doors and down into the street.

“Oh, Lord God, David, what have I done?”

A car horn startled me, then another blast jogged me loose from my stupor. I was standing in the very middle of the traffic. I backed away, and up onto the sand.

Suddenly a large stubby white ambulance came rattling to a halt directly before the hotel. One hulking young man jumped from the front seat and rushed into the lobby, while the other went to throw open the rear doors. Someone was shouting inside the building. I saw a figure at the window of my room above.

I backed further away, my legs trembling as if I were mortal, my hands clutching stupidly at my head as I peered at the horrid little scene through the dim sunglasses, watching the inevitable crowd gather as people stopped in their meandering, as they rose from the tables of the nearby restaurants and approached the hotel doors.

Now it was quite impossible to see anything in normal fashion, but the scene materialized before me as I snatched the images from mortal minds—the heavy gurney being carried through the lobby, with David’s helpless body strapped to it, the attendants forcing people to the side.

The doors of the ambulance were slammed shut. Again the siren began its frightful peal, and off the vehicle sped, carrying David’s body inside it to God only knows where!

I had to do something! But what could I do? Get into that hospital; work the change upon the body! What else can save it? And then you have James inside it? Where is David? Dear God, help me. But why should you?

At last I sprang into action. I hurried up the street, sprinting easily past the mortals who could scarcely see me, and found a glass-walled phone booth and slipped into it and slammed the door.

“I have to reach London,” I told the operator, spilling out the information: the Talamasca, collect. Why was it taking so long! I pounded upon the glass with my right fist in my impatience, the receiver pressed to my ear. At last one of those kindly patient Talamasca voices accepted the call.

“Listen to me,” I said, blurting out my name in full as I began. “This isn’t going to make sense to you, but it’s dreadfully important. The body of David Talbot has just been rushed to a hospital in the city of Miami. I don’t even know which hospital! But the body is badly wounded. The body may die. But you must understand. David is not inside this body. Are you listening? David is someplace … ”

I stopped.

A dark shape had appeared in front of me on the other side of the glass. And as my eyes fell on it, fully prepared to dismiss it—for what did I care if some mortal man were pressing me to hurry?—I realized it was my old mortal body standing there, my tall young brown-haired mortal body, in which I had lived long enough to know every small particular, every weakness and strength. I was staring into the very face I had seen in the mirror only two days ago! Only it was now two inches taller than I. I was looking up into those familiar brown eyes.

The body wore the same seersucker suit with which I had last clothed it. Indeed, there was the same white turtleneck shirt that I had pulled over its head. And one of those familiar hands was lifted now in a calm gesture, calm as the expression on the face, giving me the unmistakable command to hang up the phone.

I put the receiver back into its hook.

In a quiet fluid movement, the body came around to the front of the booth and opened the door. The right hand closed on my arm, drawing me out with my full cooperation onto the sidewalk and into the gentle wind.

“David,” I said. “Do you know what I’ve done?”

“I think so,” he said with a little lift to the eyebrows, the familiar
English voice issuing confidently from the young mouth. “I saw the ambulance at the hotel.”

“David, it was a mistake, a horrible, horrible mistake!”

“Come on, let’s get away from here,” he said. And this
was
the voice I remembered, truly comforting and commanding and soft.

“But, David, you don’t understand, your body … ”

“Come, you can tell me all about it,” he said.

“It’s dying, David.”

“Well, there isn’t much we can do about it, then, is there?”

And to my utter amazement, he put his arm around me, and leant forward in his characteristic authoritative manner, and pressed me to come along with him, down the pavement to the corner, where he put up his hand to signal a cab.

“I don’t know which hospital,” I confessed. I was still shaking violently all over. I couldn’t control the tremours in my hands. And the sight of him looking down at me so serenely was shocking me beyond endurance, especially when the old familiar voice came again from the taut, tanned face.

“We’re not going to the hospital,” he said, as if deliberately trying to calm a hysterical child. He gestured to the taxi. “Please get in.”

Sliding onto the leather seat beside me, he gave the driver the address of Grand Bay Hotel in Coconut Grove.

I
WAS still in a pure mortal state of shock as we entered the large marble-tiled lobby. In a haze, I saw the sumptuous furnishings, the immense vases of flowers, and the smartly dressed tourists drifting past. Patiently, the tall brown-haired man who had been my former self guided me to the elevator, and we went up in swooshing silence to a high floor.

I was unable to tear my eyes off him, yet my heart was throbbing from what had only just taken place. I could still taste the blood of the wounded body in my mouth!

The suite we entered now was spacious and full of muted colors, and open to the night through a great wall of floor-length windows
which looked out upon the many lighted towers along the shores of dark serene Biscayne Bay.

“You do understand what I’ve been trying to tell you,” I said, glad to be alone with him at last, and staring at him as he settled opposite me at the small round wooden table. “I hurt him, David, I hurt him in a rage. I … I flung him at the wall.”

“You and your dreadful temper, Lestat,” he said, but again it was the voice one uses to calm an overwrought child.

A great warm smile fired the beautifully molded face with its clear graceful bones, and broad serene mouth—David’s unmistakable smile.

I couldn’t respond. Slowly, I lowered my eyes from the radiant face to the powerful straight shoulders settling against the back of the chair, and the entire relaxed form.

“He led me to believe he was you!” I said, trying to focus again. “He pretended to be you. Oh, God, I poured out all my woe to him, David. He sat there listening to me, suckering me on. And then he asked for the Dark Gift. He told me he’d changed his mind. He lured me up to the rooms to give it to him, David! It was ghastly. It was everything I had wanted, and yet I knew something wasn’t right! Something about him was so sinister. Oh, and there were clues, and I didn’t see them! What a fool I was.”