"Dora.
"I saw her, smelled her, smelled the blood from between her legs again, saw her tender little face, white and stricken, and on either side of her like goblins our of nursery rhymes and tales of hell, Armand and David, vampires, monsters, both staring at me in the same stark wonder.
"I struggled to open the left eye that was no longer there, then turned my head this way and that to see the three of them distinctly with the one eye, the right eye, that I still had. I could feel a sharp tiny pain like so many needles in the empty tissues where my left eye had been.
"Oh, the horror on Armand's face. In his old finery, he stood, heavy shopwindow velvet coat, modern lace, boots spiffed like glass. His face, the Botticelli angel still, torn with pain as he looked at me.
"And David, the pity, the sympathy. Both figures transfixed in one, the elder Englishman and the young fine body into which he'd been locked, smothered in the tweed and cashmere garments of winter.
"Monsters clothed as men but earthbound, real!
"And the shining gamine figure of Dora, my slender, yearning Dora with her huge black eyes.
"'Darling, darling,' Dora cried, 'I am here!' Her small warm arms went round my aching shoulders, oblivious to the snow falling from my hair, from my clothes. I went down on my knees, my face buried in her skirts, near to the blood between her legs, the blood of the living womb, the blood of Earth, the blood of Dora that the body could give, and then I fell backwards onto the floor.
"I could neither speak nor move. I felt her lips touch mine.
"'You're safe now, Lestat,' she said.
"Or was it David's voice?
"'You're with us,' she said.
"Or was it Armand?
"'We're here.'
"'Look, look at his feet. He's got only one shoe left.'
"'...at his coat, torn...the buttons are gone.'
"'Darling, darling.' She kissed me.
"I rolled her over gently, careful not to press her with my weight, and I pulled up her skirt, and I lay my face against her hot naked thighs. The smell of blood flooded my brain.
"'Forgive me, forgive me,' I whispered, and my tongue broke through the thin cotton of her panties, tearing the cloth back from the soft down of pubic hair, pushing aside the bloodstained pad she wore, and I lapped at the blood just inside her young pink vaginal lips, just coming from the mouth of her womb, not pure blood, but blood from her, blood from her strong, young body, blood all over the tight hot cells of her vaginal flesh, blood that brought no pain, no sacrifice, only her gentle forbearance with me, with my unspeakable act, my tongue going deep into her, drawing out the blood that was yet to come, gently, gently, lapping the blood from the soft hair on her pubic lips, sucking each tiny droplet of it.
"Unclean, unclean. They cried on the road to Golgotha, when Veronica had said: 'Lord, I touched the hem of your garment and my hemorrhage was healed." Unclean, unclean.
"'Unclean, thank God, unclean,' I whispered, my tongue licking at the secret bloodstained place, taste and smell of blood, her sweet blood, a place where blood flows free and no wound is made or ever needs to be made, the entrance to her blood open to me in her forgiveness.
"Snow beat against the glass. I could hear it, smell it, the blinding white snow of a terrible blizzard for New York, a deep white winter, freezing all beneath its mantle.
"'My darling, my angel,' she whispered.
"I lay panting against her. The blood was all gone inside me now. I had drawn all of it from her womb that was meant to come. I had licked away even what had collected on the pad that had lain against her skin."
Copyright © 1995 by Anne O'Brien Rice.
