Free The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice Page B

threw back her head and laughed. Such an exquisite full-throated laugh.
    “There are others out there,” David said.
    I opened my eyes, though it hurt to do it, hurt to see the dim shapes of the room. Sun almost coming. I felt the claws of the tiger under my fingers. Ah, precious beast. David stood at the window. He was peering through a tiny seam between the two panels of drapery.
    “Out there,” he went on. “They’ve come to see that you’re all right.”
    Imagine that. “Who are they?” I couldn’t hear them, didn’t want to hear them. Was it Marius? Surely not the very ancient ones. Why would they care about such a thing?
    “I don’t know,” he said. “But they are there.”
    “You know the old story,” I whispered. “Ignore them and they’ll go away.” Almost sunrise anyway. They have to go. And they certainly won’t hurt you, David.
    “I know.”
    “Don’t read my mind if you won’t let me read yours,” I said.
    “Don’t be cross. No one will come into this room or disturb you.”
    “Yes, I can be a danger even in repose … ” I wanted to say more, to warn him further, but then I realized he was the one mortal who did not require such a warning. Talamasca. Scholars of the paranormal. He knew.
    “Sleep now,” he said.
    I had to laugh at that. What else can I do when the sun rises? Even if it shines full upon my face. But he sounded so firm and reassuring.
    To think, in the olden times, I always had the coffin, and sometimes I would polish it slowly until the wood had a great luster to it, and then I’d shine the tiny crucifix on top of it, smiling at myself, at the care with which I buffed the little twisted body of the massacred Christ, the Son of God. I’d loved the satin lining of the box. I’d loved the shape, and the twilight act of rising from the dead. But no more … 
    The sun was truly coming, the cold winter sun of England. I could feel it for certain, and suddenly I was afraid. I could feel the light stealing over the ground outside and striking the windows. But the darkness held on this side of the velvet curtains.
    I saw the little flame in the oil lamp rise. It scared me, just because I was in such pain and it was a flame. Her small rounded fingers on the golden key, and that ring, that ring I gave her with the tiny diamond set in pearls. What about the locket? Should I ask her about the locket?
Claudia, was there ever a gold locket … ?
    Turning the flame higher and higher. That smell again. Her dimpled hand. All through the long flat in the Rue Royale, one could catch the scent of the oil. Ah, that old wallpaper, and the pretty handmade furniture, and Louis writing at his desk, sharp smell of the black ink, dull scratch of the quill pen … 
    Her little hand was touching my cheek, so deliciously cold, and that vague thrill that passes through me when one of the others touches me,
our skin
.
    “Why would anyone want
me
to live?” I asked. At least that was what I started to ask … and then I was simply gone.

FOUR
    T WILIGHT. The pain was still very great. I didn’t want to move. The skin on my chest and on my legs was tightening and tingling and this only gave variation to the pain.
    Even the blood thirst, raging fiercely, and the smell of the bloodof the servants in the house couldn’t make me move. I knew David was there, but I didn’t speak to him. I thought if I tried to speak, I would weep on account of the pain.
    I slept and I know that I dreamed, but I couldn’t remember the dreams when next I opened my eyes. I would see the oil lamp again, and the light still frightened me. And so did her voice.
    Once I woke talking to her in the darkness. “Why you of all people? Why you in my dreams? Where’s your bloody knife?”
    I was grateful when the dawn came. I had sometimes deliberately clamped my mouth shut not to cry out over the pain.
    When I woke the second night, the pain was not very great. My body was sore all over, perhaps what mortals call