Once again, the giant kitchen.
A pair of huge doors. Refrigerator? Freezer? One was laden with locks.
I broke them off immediately.
As soon as the white mist cleared I stepped inside and I saw in the light over my shoulder the bodies frozen on the floor.
The tall black-haired man with the white hair above his ears, and the red-haired woman, both with their eyes closed, serene, tender to behold in each other’s arms, white cotton garments, bare feet, angels sleeping together. Covered with frost, as if in the deep claw of intentional winter.
Scattered end to end on them, but not on their faces, were frozen yet once beautiful flowers.
I stood to one side gazing down at them, as the others peered through the door. I gazed at the frozen fluids on the floor, at the discoloration of their skin here and there, at the perfection of their embrace and their utter stillness.
Miravelle let out a high-pitched scream: “Mother. Father.”
Oberon sighed and turned away. “And so down the long centuries he comes to this,” he murmured, “at the hands of his own sons and daughters, and she the mother of us all who might have lived a millennium. And who put the flowers here, may I ask? Was it you, Lorkyn, you traitor to everything they believed? It had to be, did it not? You petty deserter. May God forgive you that you made peace with our enemy. Did you lead them here by the hand yourself?”
Mona stepped into the lighted rectangle of the door. “That’s my daughter,” she whispered. No tears. No sobs.
I felt the immense falling off in her of hope, of dreams, of love itself. I saw the bitter acceptance in her face, the deep drifting.
Miravelle was crying. “So he made them hard as ice, that’s what he did,” she cried. She put her hands to her face and cried and cried.
I knelt down beside the pair, and I laid my hand on the man’s head. Frozen solid. If there was a soul in there, I couldn’t feel it. But what did I know? Same with the red-haired woman, so resembling Mona in her fresh Nordic beauty.
I walked carefully out of the freezer until I reached the warm air, and I took Mona in my arms. She was shaking all over but her eyes were dry and squinting in the white mist. Then she roused herself as best she could.
“Come on, Miravelle, my dear,” she said. “Let’s close the door. Let’s wait for help to come.”
“But who can help?” said Miravelle. “Lorkyn will make us do what she wants us to do. And all the others are gone.”
“Don’t worry about Lorkyn,” said Quinn.
Oberon wiped away his tears disgustedly, and once again he took Miravelle in his arms and embraced her warmly. He reached out his right hand, with its long delicate fingers, and stroked Mona’s bowed head, and drew her close to him.
We closed the freezer door.
“Quinn,” I said, “punch in First Street for me, then give me the little phone.”
He obliged with one-handed dexterity, still keeping Lorkyn prisoner with a left-handed grip.
Lorkyn’s face was sweet and musing, revealing nothing. Oberon, though he held Miravelle and Mona both, was glaring at Lorkyn with undisguised malice.
“Watch,” I whispered to Mona.
Then I was on the phone:
“Lestat to speak to Rowan about Morrigan.”
Her low husky voice came on the line: “What have you got for me, Lestat?”
I told her everything. “How fast can you get here?”
Mona took the phone from me. “Rowan, they could be alive! They could be in suspended animation!”
“They’re dead,” said Lorkyn.
Mona surrendered the phone.
Rowan asked: “Will you stay until I get there?”
“We’re creatures of the dark, my beloved,” I said. “As mortals are wont to say: Make it snappy.”
It was two a.m. when the jet landed. It barely made it on the long runway.
By that time, Mona and I—leaving Oberon and Lorkyn in the custody of Quinn—had spent two hours getting rid of every corpse on the island. To the devouring sea we fed the remains even to the grisly remnants of the charred and smoking copter—a grim task, save for the placid overpowering waves of the Caribbean, so quickly forgiving every unclean offering.
Just before the plane landed, Mona and I had also discovered Lorkyn’s digs—quite gorgeous, with a computer that was indeed hooked up to the outside world, and loaded with information about the Drug Merchants, and bank accounts in a dozen places at least.
But what had astonished both of us was the medical information of all kinds—countless articles downloaded from seemingly respectable sources on every aspect of health care, from studies of diet to neurosurgery and the intricacies of heart bypass operations and the removal of tumors of the brain.
In fact, there was far more medical information than we could conceivably examine.
Then we hit the material on Mayfair Medical.
And it was there, in that strange place, in moments sandwiched between violence and mystery, that I realized how immense the Mayfair Medical project was, how multifaceted and daring and full of promise. I saw the layout of the hospital and laboratories. I saw lists of doctors, lists of units and programs and research teams.
In addition, Lorkyn had downloaded dozens of articles about the Center which had appeared in medical journals.
And finally we came upon an immense amount of material on Rowan herself—her career, her achievements in research, her personal plans for the Center, her pet projects, her attitudes, her goals.
We couldn’t possibly cover it all.
We decided we had to take the microprocessor with us. No choice really. Had to take Oberon’s as well. No traces of the tragedy would be left for strangers.
Rowan and Stirling were first off the plane, Rowan in jeans and plain white shirt and Stirling in a tweed suit. Immediately they reacted to the spectacle of the three Taltos, in fact, Rowan appeared to go into a silent shock.
I presented Rowan with the microprocessors from the two computers, which she entrusted to an assistant who put them safely on the plane. Lorkyn watched all this with eyes as unreadable as Rowan’s, though they looked much softer, perhaps part of a very sweet mask. She had been absolutely silent all during the wait and she showed no change now.
Miravelle was weeping. Oberon, having relieved himself of the bandanna and brushed his hair, looked beyond handsome, and deigned to give Rowan a slight nod of his head.
Then Rowan said to Mona:
“Where are the bodies?”
Out of the plane as if on cue came a crew of men in white scrubs, on down the metal stair carrying what looked like a giant sleeping bag. They had other equipment I couldn’t decipher or describe.
We went back to the freezer.
All this time Lorkyn made no protest, though Quinn held her tightly, but she kept her large exquisite eyes on Rowan, except for occasional glances at Oberon who never stopped staring at her with a look of pure venom.
Rowan stepped cautiously inside the freezer as I’d done before. She examined the bodies minutely. She touched the stains of frozen fluid on the floor. She studied patches of discoloration on their skin. Her hands returned to their heads. Then finally she withdrew and let the team do its work of taking the bodies to the plane.
She looked at Mona:
“They’re dead,” she said. “They died a long time ago. Most likely right after they first lay down together here.”
“Perhaps not!” said Mona desperately. “Maybe they can survive temperatures that we can’t.” She looked frail and worn in her black feathered dress, her mouth shuddering.
“They’re gone,” Rowan said. Her voice was not cruel. It was solemn. She was fighting her own tears and I knew it.
Miravelle began to cry again. “Oh Mother, oh Father. . . .”
“There’s evidence of widespread decay,” Rowan said. “The temperature was not consistently maintained. They didn’t suffocate. They fell asleep as people do in the snow. They were probably warm at the end, and they died peacefully.”
“Oh, that is so lovely,” said Miravelle with the purest sincerity. “Don’t you think, Mona? It’s so very pretty. Lorkyn, darling, don’t you think it is very sweet?”
“Yes, Miravelle, dear,” said Lorkyn softly. “Don’t worry anymore about them. Their intent has been fulfilled.”
She had not spoken in so long that this warmth took me by surprise.
“And what was their intent?” I asked.
“That Rowan Mayfair know of their fate,” said Lorkyn calmly. “That the Secret People not vanish.”
Rowan sighed. Her face was indescribably sad.
She opened wide her arms and shepherded us out of the kitchen, a doctor leading us away from a deathbed.
We went out into the warm air, and the landscape seemed peaceful and given over to the rhythm of the waves and the breeze—cleansed by violence and mercilessness.
I looked beyond the lighted buildings to the huge mass of hovering jungle. I scanned again for any presence, human or Taltos. The dense growth was too thick with living things for me to detect any one creature.
I felt soul sick and empty. At the same time the three Taltos were worrying me in the extreme. What precisely was going to happen to them?
The crew with the frozen bodies ran past us to board the plane, and we made our way slowly to the metal steps on the tarmac.
“Did Father really ask for this, this freezing?” Oberon wanted to know. He had lost all of his scornful manner. “Did he go willingly to this death?” he asked sincerely.
“That’s what Rodrigo always said,” replied Miravelle, who was now in Stirling’s arms, weeping piteously. “Father had told me to hide from the bad men, so I wasn’t with him. They didn’t find me until the next day. Lorkyn and I were together, hiding in the little house by the tennis courts. We didn’t see what happened. We never saw Father and Mother again.”
“I don’t want to board this plane as a prisoner,” said Lorkyn very politely. “And I’d like to know where I’m going. It’s unclear to me, the source of authority here. Dr. Mayfair, would you please explain?”
“You’re the victim of concern right now, Lorkyn,” said Rowan in the same mild tone that Lorkyn had used with her.
Rowan reached into her pants pocket, pulled out a syringe and, as Lorkyn stared in horror and desperately struggled, sank a needle into the arm by which Quinn held her. Lorkyn went down clawing at Quinn and then finally totally collapsed, all hips, knees and spidery hands, kitten face asleep.
Oberon watched with narrow eyes and a chilling smile.
“You should have slit her throat, Dr. Rowan Mayfair,” he said, with the rise of one eyebrow. “As a matter of fact, I think I can break all the bones in her neck if you’ll kindly allow me to try it.”
Miravelle spun around out of Stirling’s loving grip and glared at Oberon: “No, no, you can’t do such a horrible thing to Lorkyn. It’s not Lorkyn’s fault she’s wise and knowing! Oberon, you can’t do mean things to her, not now.”
Mona gave a short bitter laugh. “Maybe you’ve got your prize specimen, Rowan,” she said in her frail voice. “Hook her up to every machine known to science, vivisect her, freeze her in fragments and on slides, make her lactate the marvelous Taltos milk!”
Rowan stared so icily at Mona it was difficult to tell if she heard the words. She called for help from inside the plane.
The sleeping Lorkyn was placed on a stretcher with restraints and taken on board as we waited in silence.
Stirling followed with Miravelle, who was still weeping for Mother and Father. “If only Father had called Rowan Mayfair when he wanted to. But Mother was so jealous. She knew Father loved Rowan Mayfair. Oh, if only Father had not listened. And now the Secret People are just us three.”
Rowan caught those words, glanced at me and then at Mona. Mona registered them too with a dark flashing glance at Rowan. The darkness overcame Rowan.
Oberon stood quite free, the picture of relaxation, with his weight on one hip, thumbs in his back pockets, studying Rowan in detail, his huge eyes half-mast again and his cheeks still wet from weeping.
“Don’t tell me,” he drawled, his head thrown back, “you want me to get in that plane too and go back with you to your Center of Medical Marvels.”
“Where else are you going to go?” asked Rowan with a coolness that matched his own. “You’re going to leave Miravelle and Lorkyn?”
“Rowan’s your kin,” said Mona, her voice strained and impatient, “she’s your family, she’ll take care of you, Oberon. If you have an ounce of sense let it override your crushing sarcasm and caustic wit, and get on the plane, and behave yourself. You might just discover you belong to an extremely rich clan of remarkably generous people.”
“Your optimism touches me,” he tossed off to Mona. “Shall we assume that it was devotion to the remarkable generous clan that drove you to run away with a couple of Blood Hunters and allow them to transform you into what you are?”
“Oberon,” I said. “I set you free, did I not?”
“Here it comes,” he said, rolling his eyes, “for the sake of Saint Juan Diego, will I please behave for Rowan Mayfair, the only human being Father ever truly loved, and will I not blind Lorkyn with my thumbs first chance I get, or something even more deliciously cruel?”
“Precisely,” I said. “Cooperate with Rowan in every respect. You have nothing to lose by it. And don’t jump Miravelle and make a baby. Okay? And when you’re tempted to do otherwise, remember Saint Juan Diego.”
Oberon gave a short laugh, threw up his hands, then lowered them and turned them out, then went up the metal steps to the open door.
“This must be one hell of a saint,” said Rowan under her breath.
“On board,” I said, “Oberon can tell you all about him.”
“Wait, I’m forgetting the statue!” Oberon cried out at the top of the stairs. “How could I do such a thing?”
“I promise to bring it to you,” I said. “Besides, the Mayfairs will buy you whatever you want. Go on, board.”
He did as I told him to do, then appeared again:
“But remember, that’s the statue connected to the miracle! You have to get it!”
“I have no intention of forgetting it,” I said. He disappeared.
Now only Rowan was left, standing there with Mona and Quinn and me.
“Where are you going now?” asked Rowan.