by Anne Rice
"If you'd set out to play the violin, you'd probably be playing for the Court by now, " he said.
"Nicki, this kind of talk is poison, " I said under my breath. "You can't do anything but try to get what you want. You knew the odds were against you when you started. There isn't anything else . . . except... "
"I know. " He smiled. "Except the meaninglessness. Death. "
"Yes, " I said. "All you can do is make your life have meaning, make it good. "
"Oh, not goodness again, " he said. "You and your malady of mortality, and your malady of goodness. " He had been looking at the fire and he turned to me with a deliberately scornful expression.
"We're a pack of actors and entertainers who can't even be buried in consecrated ground. We're outcasts. "
"God, if you could only believe in it, " I said, "that we do good when we make others forget their sorrow, make them forget for a little while that. . . "
"What? That they are going to die? " He smiled in a particularly vicious way. "Lestat, I thought all this would change with you when we got to Paris. "
"That was foolish of you, Nick, " I answered. He was making me angry now. "I do good in the boulevard du Temple. I feel it- " I stopped because I saw the mysterious face again and a dark feeling had passed over me, something of foreboding. Yet even that startling face was usually smiling, that was the odd thing. Yes, smiling . . . enjoying . . .
"Lestat, I love you, " Nicki said gravely. "I love you as I have loved few people in my life, but in a real way you're a fool with all your ideas about goodness. " I laughed.
"Nicolas, " I said, "I can live without God. I can even come to live with the idea there is no life after. But I do not think I could go on if I did not believe in the possibility of goodness. Instead of mocking me for once, why don't you tell me what you believe? "
"As I see it, " he said, "there's weakness and there's strength. And there is good art and bad art. And that is what I believe in. At the moment we are engaged in making what is rather bad art and it has nothing to do with goodness! "
"Our conversation " could have fumed into a full-scale fight here if I had said all that was on my mind about bourgeois pomposity. For I fully believed that our work at Renaud's was in many ways finer than what I saw at the grand theaters. Only the framework was less impressive. Why couldn't a bourgeois gentleman forget about the frame? How could he be made to look at something other than the surface? I took a deep breath.
"If goodness does exist, " he said, "then I'm the opposite of it. I'm evil and I revel in it. I thumb my nose at goodness. And if you must know, I don't play the violin for the idiots who come to Renaud's to make them happy. I play it for me, for Nicolas. " I didn't want to hear any more. It was time to go to bed. But I was bruised by this little talk and he knew it, and as I started to pull off my boots, he got up from the chair and came and sat next to me.
"I'm sorry, " he said in the most broken voice. It was so changed from the posture of a minute ago that I looked up at him, and he was so young and so miserable that I couldn't help putting my arm around him and telling him that he must not worry about it anymore.
"You have a radiance in you, Lestat, " he said. "And it draws everyone to you. It's there even when you're angry, or discouraged. "
"Poetry, " I said. "We're both tired. "
"No, it's true, " he said. "You have a light in you that's almost blinding. But in me there's only darkness. Sometimes I think it's like the darkness that infected you that night in the inn when you began to cry and to tremble. You were so helpless, so unprepared for it. I try to keep the darkness from you because I need your light. I need it desperately, but you don't need the darkness. "
"You're the mad one, " I said. "If you could see yourself, hear your own voice, your music-which of course you play for yourself-you wouldn't see darkness, Nicki. You'd see an illumination that is all your own. Somber, yes, but light and beauty come together in you in a thousand different patterns. " The next night the performance went especially well. The audience was a lively one, inspiring all of us to extra tricks. I did some new dance steps that for some reason never proved interesting in private rehearsal but worked miraculously on the stage. And Nicki was extraordinary with the violin, playing one of his own compositions. But towards the end of the evening I glimpsed the mysterious face again. It jarred me worse than it ever had, and I almost lost the rhythm of my song. In fact it seemed my head for a moment was swimming. When Nicki and I were alone I had to talk about it, about the peculiar sensation that I had fallen asleep on the stage and had been dreaming. We sat by the hearth together with our wine on the top of a little barrel, and in the firelight Nicki looked as weary and dejected as he had the night before. I didn't want to trouble him, but I couldn't forget about the face.
"Well, what does he look like? " Nicolas asked. He was warming his hands. And over his shoulder, I saw through the window a city of snow-covered rooftops that made me feel more cold. I didn't like this conversation.
"That's the worst part of it, " I said. "All I see is a face. He must be wearing something black, a cloak and even a hood. But it looks like a mask to me, the face, very white and strangely clear. I mean the lines in his face are so deep they seemed to be etched with black greasepaint. I see it for a moment. It veritably glows. Then when I look again, there's no one there. Yet this is an exaggeration. It's more subtle than that, the way he looks and yet . . . " The description seemed to disturb Nicki as much as it disturbed me. He didn't say anything. But his face softened somewhat as if he were forgetting his sadness.
"Well, I don't want to get your hopes up, " he said. He was very kind and sincere now. "But maybe it is a mask you're seeing. And maybe it's someone from the Comedie-Francaise come to see you perform. "
I shook my head. "I wish it was, but no one would wear a mask like that. And I'll tell you something else, too. " He waited, but I could see I was passing on to him some of my own apprehension. He reached over and took the wine bottle by the neck and poured a little in my glass.
"Whoever he is, " I said, "he knows about the wolves. "
"He what? "
"He knows about the wolves. " I was very unsure of myself. It was like recounting a dream I had all but forgotten. "He knows I killed the wolves back home. He knows the cloak I wear is lined with their fur. " "What are you talking about? You mean you've spoken to him? " "No, that's just it, " I said. This was so confusing to me, so vague. I felt that swimming sensation again. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. I've never spoken to him, never been near him. But he knows. "
"Ah, Lestat, " he said. He sat back on the bench. He was smiling at me in the most endearing way. "Next you'll be seeing ghosts. You have the strongest imagination of anyone I've ever known. "
"There are no ghosts, " I answered softly. I scowled at our little fire.
I laid a few more lumps of coal on it. All the humor went out of Nicolas.
"How in the hell could he know about the wolves? And how could you... "
"I told you already, I don't know. " I said. I sat thinking and not saying anything, disgusted, maybe, at how ridiculous it all seemed.
And then as we remained silent together, and the fire was the only sound or movement in the room, the name Wolfkiller came to me very distinctly as if someone had spoken it. But nobody had. I looked at Nicks, painfully aware that his lips had never moved, and I think all the blood drained from my face. I felt not the dread of death as I had on so many other nights, but an emotion that was really alien to me: fear. I was still sitting there, too unsure of myself to say anything, when Nicolas kissed me.
"Let's go to bed, " he said softly.
Part II - The Legacy of Magnus
1
It must have been three o'clock in the morning; I'd heard the church bells in my sleep. And like all sensible men in Paris, we had our door barred and our window locked. Not good for a room with a coal fire, but the roof was a path to our window. And we were locked in. I was dreaming of the wolves. I wa
s on the mountain and surrounded and I was swinging the old medieval flail. Then the wolves were dead again, and the dream was better, only I had all those miles to walk in the snow. The horse screamed in the snow. My mare turned into a loathsome insect half smashed on the stone floor. A voice said "Wolfkiller " long and low, a whisper that was like a summons and a tribute at the same time. I opened my eyes. Or I thought I did. And there was someone standing in the room. A tall, bent figure with its back to the little hearth. Embers still glowed on the hearth. The light moved upwards, etching the edges of the figure clearly, then dying out before it reached the shoulders, the head. But I realized I was looking right at the white face I'd seen in the audience at the theater, and my mind, opening, sharpening, realized the room was locked, that Nicolas lay beside me, that this figure stood over our bed. I heard Nicolas's breathing. I looked into the white face.
"Wolfkiller, " came the voice again. But the lips hadn't moved, and the figure drew nearer and I saw that the face was no mask. Black eyes, quick and calculating black eyes, and white skin, and some appalling smell coming from it, like the smell of moldering clothes in a damp room. I think I rose up. Or perhaps I was lifted. Because in an instant I was standing on my feet. The sleep was slipping off me like garments. I was backing up into the wall. The figure had my red cloak in its hands. Desperately I thought of my sword, my muskets. They were under the bed on the floor. And the thing thrust the red cloak towards me and then, through the fur-lined velvet, I felt its hand close on the lapel of my coat. I was torn forward. I was drawn off my feet across the room. I shouted for Nicolas. I screamed,
"Nicki, Nicki! " as loud as I could. I saw the partially opened window, and then suddenly the glass burst into thousands of fragments and the wooden frame was broken out. I was flying over the alleyway, six stories above the ground. I screamed. I kicked at this thing that was carrying me. Caught up in the red cloak, I twisted, trying to get loose. But we were flying over the rooftop, and now going up the straight surface of a brick wall! I was dangling in the arm of the creature, and then very suddenly on the surface of a high place, I was thrown down. I lay for a moment seeing Paris spread out before me in a great circle-the white snow, and chimney pots and church belfries, and the lowering sky. And then I rose up, stumbling over the fur-lined cloak, and I started to run. I ran to the edge of the roof and looked down. Nothing but a sheer drop of hundreds of feet, and then to another edge and it was exactly the same. I almost fell! I turned desperate, panting. We were on the top of some square tower, no more than fifty feet across! And I could see nothing higher in any direction. And the figure stood staring at me, and I heard come out of it a low rasping laughter just like the whisper before.
"Wolfkiller, " it said again.
"Damn you! " I shouted. "Who the hell are you! " And in a rage I flew at it with my fists. It didn't move. I struck it as if I were striking the brick wall. I veritably bounced off it, losing my footing in the snow and scrambling up and attacking it again. Its laughter grew louder and louder, and deliberately mocking, but with a strong undercurrent of pleasure that was even more maddening than the mockery. I ran to the edge of the tower and then fumed on the creature again.
"What do you want with me! " I demanded. "Who are you! " And when it gave nothing but this maddening laughing, I went for it again. But this time I went for the face and the neck, and I made my hands like claws to do it, and I pulled off the hood and saw the creature's black hair and the full shape of its human-looking head. Soft skin. Yet it was as immovable as before. It backed up a little, raising its arms to play with me, to push me back and forth as a man would push a little child. Too fast for my eyes, it moved its face away from me, fuming to one side and then the other, and all of these movements with seeming effortlessness, as I frantically tried to hurt it and could feel nothing but that soft white skin sliding under my fingers and maybe once or twice its fine black hair.
"Brave strong little Wolfkiller, " it said to me now in a rounder, deeper voice. I stopped, panting and covered with sweat, staring at it and seeing the details of its face. The deep lines I had only glimpsed in the theater, its mouth drawn up in a jester's smile.
"Oh, God help me; help me... " I said as I backed away. It seemed impossible that such a face should move, show expression, and gaze with such affection on me as it did. "God! "
"What god is that, Wolfkiller? " it asked. I turned my back on it, and let out a terrible roar. I felt its hands close on my shoulders like things forged of metal, and as I went into a last frenzy of struggling, it whipped me around so that its eyes were sight before me, wide and dark, and the lips were closed yet still smiling, and then it bent down and I felt the prick of its teeth on my neck. Out of all the childhood tales, the old fables, the name came to me, like a drowned thing shooting to the surface of black water and breaking free in the light.
"Vampire! " I gave one last frantic cry, shoving at the creature with all I had. Then there was silence. Stillness. I knew that we were still on the roof. I knew that I was being held in the thing's arms. Yet it seemed we had risen, become weightless, were traveling through the darkness even more easily than we had traveled before.
"Yes, yes, " I wanted to say, "exactly. " And a great noise was echoing all around me, enveloping me, the sound of a deep gong perhaps, being struck very slowly in perfect rhythm, its sound washing through me so that I felt the most extraordinary pleasure through all my limbs. My lips moved, but nothing came out of them; yet this didn't really matter. All the things I had ever wanted to say were clear to me and that is what mattered, not that they be expressed. And there was so much time, so much sweet time in which to say anything and do anything. There was no urgency at all. Rapture. I said the word, and it seemed clear to me, that one word, though I couldn't speak or really move my lips. And I realized I was no longer breathing. Yet something was making me breathe. It was breathing for me and the breaths came with the rhythm of the gong which was nothing to do with my body, and I loved it, the rhythm, the way that it went on and on, and I no longer had to breathe or speak or know anything. My mother smiled at me. And I said, "I love you... " to her, and she said, "Yes, always loved, always loved... " And I was sitting in the monastery library and I was twelve years old and the monk said to me, "A great scholar, " and I opened all the books and could read everything, Latin, Greek, French. The illuminated letters were indescribably beautiful, and I fumed around and faced the audience in Renaud's theater and saw all of them on their feet, and a woman moved the painted fan from in front of her face, and it was Marie Antoinette. She said "Wolfkiller, " and Nicolas was running towards me, crying for me to come back. His face was full of anguish. His hair was loose and his eyes were rimmed with blood. He tried to catch me. I said, "Nicki, get away from me! " and I realized in agony, positive agony, that the sound of the gong was fading away. I cried out, I begged. Don't stop it, please, please. I don't want to . . . I don't . . . please.
"Lelio, the Wolfkiller, " said the thing, and it was holding me in its arms and I was crying because the spell was breaking.
"Don't, don't. " I was heavy all over, my body had come back to me with its aches and its pains and my own choking cries, and I was being lifted, thrown upwards, until I fell over the creature's shoulder and I felt its arm around my knees. I wanted to say God protect me, I wanted to say it with every particle of me but I couldn't say it, and there was the alleyway below me again, that drop of hundreds of feet, and the whole of Paris tilted at an appalling angle, and there was the snow and the searing wind.
2
I was awake and I was very thirsty. I wanted a great deal of very cold white wine, the way it is when you bring it up out of the cellar in autumn. I wanted something fresh and sweet to eat, like a ripe apple.
It did occur to me that I had lost my reason, though I couldn't have said why. I opened my eyes and knew it was early evening. The light might have been morning light, but too much time had passed for that. It was evening. And through a wide, heavily barred stone w
indow I saw hills and woods, blanketed with snow, and the vast tiny collection of rooftops and towers that made up the city far away. I hadn't seen it like this since the day I came in the post carriage. I closed my eyes and the vision of it remained as if I'd never opened my eyes at all. But it was no vision. It was there. And the room was warm in spite of the window. There had been a fire in the room, I could smell it, but the fire had gone out. I tried to reason. But I couldn't stop thinking about cold white wine, and apples in the basket. I could see the apples. I felt myself drop down out of the branches of the tree, and I smelled all around me the freshly cut grass. The sunlight was blinding on the green fields. It shone on Nicolas's brown hair, and on the deep lacquer of the violin. The music climbed up to the soft, rolling clouds. And against the sky I saw the battlements of my father's house. Battlements. I opened my eyes again. And I knew I was lying in a high tower room several miles from Paris. And just in front of me, on a crude little wooden table, was a bottle of cold white wine, precisely as I had dreamed it. For a long time I looked at it, looked at the frost of droplets covering it, and I could not believe it possible to reach for it and drink. Never had I known the thirst I was suffering now. My whole body thirsted. And I was so weak. And I was getting a little cold. The room moved when I moved. The sky gleamed in the window. And when at last I did reach for the bottle and pull the cork from it and smell the tart, delicious aroma, I drank and drank without stopping, not caring what would happen to me, or where I was, or why the bottle had been set here. My head swung forward. The bottle was almost empty and the faraway city was vanishing in the black sky, leaving a little sea of lights behind it. I put my hands to my head. The bed on which I'd been sleeping was no more than stone with straw strewn upon it, and it was coming to me slowly that I might be in some sort of jail. But the wine. It had been too good for a jail. Who would give a prisoner wine like that, unless of course the prisoner was to be executed. And another aroma came to me, rich and overpowering and so delicious that it made me moan. I looked about, or I should say, I tried to look about because I was almost too weak to move. But the source of this aroma was near to me, and it was a large bowl of beef broth. The broth was thick with bits of meat, and I could see the steam rising from it. It was still hot. I grabbed it in both hands immediately and I drank it as thoughtlessly and greedily as I'd chunk the wine. It was so satisfying it was as if I'd never known any food like it, that rich boiled-down essence of the meat, and when the bowl was empty I fell back, full, almost sick, on the straw. It seemed something moved in the darkness near me. But I was not sure. I heard the chink of glass.