by Anne Rice
"Now, " she said, and her voice startled me. It was softer, more resonant than before. For one moment we were in Auvergne, the snow was falling, and she was singing to me and it was echoing as if in a great cave. But that was finished. She said, "Go . . . done with all of this, quickly-now! " She nodded to coax me and she came closer and she tugged at my hand.
"Look at yourself in the minor, " she whispered. But I knew. I had given her more blood than I had taken from her. I was starved. I hadn't even fed before I came to her. But I was so taken with the sound of the syllables and that glimpse of snow falling and the memory of the singing that for a moment I didn't respond. I looked at her fingers touching mine. I saw our flesh was the same. I rose up out of the chair and held her two hands and then I felt of her arms and her face. It was done and I was alive still! She was with me now. She had come through that awful solitude and she was with me, and I could think of nothing suddenly except holding her, crushing her to me, never letting her go. I lifted her off her feet. I swung her up in my arms and we turned round and round. She threw back her head and her laughter shook loose from her, growing louder and louder, until I put my hand over her mouth.
"You can shatter all the glass in the room with your voice, " I whispered. I glanced towards the doors. Nicki and Roget were out there.
"Then let me shatter it! " she said, and there was nothing playful in her expression. I set her on her feet. I think we embraced again and again almost foolishly. I couldn't keep myself from it. But other mortals were moving in the flat, the doctor and the nurses thinking that they should come in. I saw her look to the door. She was hearing them too. But why wasn't I hearing her? She broke away from me, eyes darting from one object to another. She snatched up the candles again and brought them to the mirror where she looked at her face. I understood what was happening to her. She needed time to see and to measure with her new vision. But we had to get out of the flat. I could hear Nicki's voice through the wall, urging the doctor to knock on the door. How was I to get her out of here, get rid of them?
"No, not that way, " she said when she saw me look at the door. She was looking at the bed, the objects on the table. She went to the bed and took her jewels from under the pillow. She examined them and put them back into the worn velvet purse. Then she fastened the purse to her skirt so that it was lost in the folds of cloth. There was an air of importance to these little gestures. I knew even though her mind was giving me nothing that this was all she wanted from this room. She was taking leave of things, the clothes she'd brought with her, her ancient silver brush and comb, and the tattered books that lay on the table by the bed. There was knocking at the door.
"Why not this way? " she asked, and turning to the window, she threw open the glass. The breeze gusted into the gold draperies and lifted her hair off the back of her neck, and when she turned I shivered at the sight of her, her hair tangling around her face, and her eyes wide and filled with myriad fragments of color and an almost tragic light. She was afraid of nothing. I took hold of her and for a moment wouldn't let her go. I nestled my face into her hair, and all I could think again was that we were together and nothing was ever going to separate us now. I didn't understand her silence, why I couldn't hear her, but I knew it wasn't her doing, and perhaps I believed it would pass. She was with me. That was the world. Death was my commander and I gave him a thousand victims, but I'd snatched her right out of his hand. I said it aloud. I said other desperate and nonsensical things. We were the same terrible and deadly beings, the two of us, we were wandering in the Savage Garden and I tried to make it real for her with images, the meaning of the Savage Garden, but it didn't matter if she didn't understand.
"The Savage Garden, " she repeated the words reverently, her lips making a soft smile. It was pounding in my head. I felt her kissing me and making some little whisper as if in accompaniment to her thoughts. She said, "But help me, now, I want to see you do it, now, and we have forever to hold to each other. Come. " Thirst. I should have been burning. I positively required the blood, and she wanted the taste, I knew she did. Because I remembered that I had wanted it that very first night. It struck me then that the pain of her physical death . . . the fluids leaving her... might be lessened if she could first drink. The knocking came again. The door wasn't locked. I stepped up on the sill of the window and reached for her, and immediately she was in my arms. She weighed nothing, but I could feel her power, the tenacity of her grip. Yet when she saw the alley below, the top of the wall and the quai beyond, she seemed for a moment to doubt.
"Put your arms around my neck, " I said, "and hold tight. " I climbed up the stones, carrying her with her feet dangling, her face turned upwards to me, until we had reached the slippery slates of the roof. Then I took her hand and pulled her after me, running faster and faster, over the gutters and the chimney pots, leaping across the narrow alleys until we had reached the other side of the island. I'd been ready any moment for her to cry out or cling to me, but she wasn't afraid. She stood silent, looking over the rooftops of the Left Bank, and down at the river crowded with thousands of dark little boats full of ragged beings, and she seemed for the moment simply to feel the wind unraveling her hair. I could have fallen in a stupor looking at her, studying her, all the aspects of the transformation, but there was an immense excitement in me to take her through the entire city, to reveal all things to her, to teach her everything I'd learned. She knew nothing of physical exhaustion now any more than I did. And she wasn't stunned by any horror such as I had been when Magnus went into the fire. A carriage came speeding along the quai below, listing badly towards the river, the driver hunched over, trying to keep his balance on the high bench. I pointed to it as it drew near and I clasped her hand. We leapt as it came beneath us, landing soundlessly on the leather top. The busy driver never looked around. I held tight to her, steadying her, until we were both riding easily, ready to jump off the vehicle when we chose. It was indescribably thrilling, doing this with her. We were thundering over the bridge and past the cathedral, and on through the crowds on the Pont Neuf. I heard her laughter again. I wondered what those in the high windows saw when they looked down on us, two gaily dressed figures clinging to the unsteady roof of the carriage like mischievous children as if it were a raft. The carriage swerved. We were racing towards St. Germain des- Pres, scattering the crowds before us and roaring past the intolerable stench of the cemetery of les Innocents as towering tenements closed in. For one second, I felt the shimmer of the presence, but it was gone so quickly I doubted myself. I looked back and could catch no glimmer of it. And I realized with extraordinary vividness that Gabrielle and I would talk about the presence together, that we would talk about everything together, and approach all things together. This night was as cataclysmic in its own way as the night Magnus had changed me, and this night had only begun. The neighborhood was perfect now. I took her hand again, and pulled her after me, off the carriage, down into the street. She stared dazed at the spinning wheels, but they were immediately gone. She didn't even look disheveled so much as she looked impossible, a woman torn out of time and place, clad only in slippers and dress, no chains on her, free to soar. We entered a narrow alleyway and ran together, arms around each other, and now and then I looked down to see her eyes sweeping the walls above us, the scores of shuttered windows with their little streaks of escaping light. I knew what she was seeing. I knew the sounds that pressed in on her. But still I could hear nothing from her, and this frightened me a little to think maybe she was deliberately shutting me out. But she had stopped. She was having the first spasm of her death.
I could see it in her face. I reassured her, and reminded her in quick words of the vision I'd given her before.
"This is brief pain, nothing compared to what you've known. It will be gone in a matter of hours, maybe less if we drink now. " She nodded, more impatient with it than afraid. We came out into a little square. In the gateway to an old house a young man stood, as if waiting for someone, the collar of his
gray cloak up to shield his face. Was she strong enough to take him? Was she as strong as I? This was the time to find out.
"If the thirst doesn't carry you into it, then it's too soon, " I told her.
I glanced at her and a coldness crept over me. Her look of concentration was almost purely human, so intent was it, so fixed; and her eyes were shadowed with that same sense of tragedy I'd glimpsed before. Nothing was lost on her. But when she moved towards the man she wasn't human at all. She had become a pure predator, as only a beast can be a predator, and yet she was a woman walking slowly towards a man-a lady, in fact, stranded here without cape or hat or companions, and approaching a gentleman as if to beg for his aid. She was all that. It was ghastly to watch it, the way that she moved over the stones as if she did not even touch them, and the way that everything, even the wisps of her hair blown this way and that by the breeze, seemed somehow under her command. She could have moved through the wall itself with that relentless step. I drew back into the shadows. The man quickened, turned to her with the faint grind of his boot heel on the stones, and she rose on tiptoe as if to whisper in his ear. I think for one moment she hesitated. Perhaps she was faintly horrified. If she was, then the thirst had not had time enough to grow strong. But if she did question it, it was for no more than that second. She was taking him and he was powerless and I was too fascinated to do anything but watch. But it came to me quite unexpectedly that I hadn't warned her about the heart. How could I have forgotten such a thing? I rushed towards her, but she had already let him go. And he had crumpled against the wall, his head to one side, his hat fallen at his feet. He was dead. She stood looking down at him, and I saw the blood working in her, heating her and deepening her color and the red of her lips. Her eyes were a flash of violet when she glanced at me, almost exactly the color the sky had been when I'd come into her bedroom. I was silent watching her as she looked down at the victim with a curious amazement as if she did not completely accept what she saw. Her hair was tangled again and I lifted it back from her. She slipped into my arms. I guided her away from the victim. She glanced back once or twice, then looked straight forward.
"It's enough for this night. We should go home to the tower, " I said. I wanted to show her the treasure, and just to be with her in that safe place, to hold her and comfort her if she began to go mad over it all. She was feeling the death spasms again. There she could rest by the fire.
"No, I don't want to go yet, " she said. "The pain won't go on long, you promised it wouldn't. I want it to pass and then to be here. " She looked up at me, and she smiled. "I came to Paris to die, didn't I? " she whispered. Everything was distracting her, the dead man back there, slumped in his gray cape, the sky shimmering on the surface of a puddle of water, a cat streaking atop a nearby wall. The blood was hot in her, moving in her. I clasped her hand and urged her to follow me. "I have to drink, " I said.
"Yes, I see it, " she whispered. "You should have taken him. I should have thought . . . And you are the gentleman, even still. "
"The starving gentleman. " I smiled. "Let's not stumble over ourselves devising an etiquette for monsters. " I laughed. I would have kissed her, but I was suddenly distracted. I squeezed her hand too tightly. Far away, from the direction of les Innocents, I heard the presence as strongly as ever before. She stood as still as I was, and inclining her head slowly to one side, moved the hair back from her ear.
"Do you hear it? " I asked. She looked up at me. "Is it another one!
" She narrowed her eyes and glanced again in the direction from which the emanation had come.
"Outlaw! " she said aloud.
"What? " Outlaw, outlaw, outlaw. I felt a wave of lightheadedness, something of a dream remembered. Fragment of a dream. But I couldn't think. I'd been damaged by doing it to her. I had to drink.
"It called us outlaws, " she said. "Didn't you hear it? " And she listened again, but it was gone and neither of us heard it, and I couldn't be certain that I received that clear pulse, outlaw, but it seemed I had!
"Never mind it, whatever it is, " I said. "It never comes any closer than that. " But even as I spoke I knew it had been more virulent this time. I wanted to get away from les Innocents. "It lives in graveyards,
" I murmured. "It may not be able to live elsewhere . . . for very long. " But before I finished speaking, I felt it again, and it seemed to expand and to exude the strongest malevolence I'd received from it yet.
"It's laughing! " she whispered. I studied her. Without doubt, she was hearing it more clearly than I.
"Challenge it! " I said. "Call it a coward! Tell it to come out! " She gave me an amazed look.
"Is that really what you want to do? " she questioned me under her breath. She was trembling slightly, and I steadied her. She put her arm around her waist as if one of the spasms had come again.
"Not now then, " I said. "This isn't the time. And we'll hear it again, just when we've forgotten all about it. "
"It's gone, " she said. "But it hates us, this thing. . . "
"Let's get away from it, " I said contemptuously, and putting my arm around her I hurried her along. I didn't tell her what I was thinking, what weighed on me far more than the presence and its usual tricks. If she could hear the presence as well as I could, better in fact, then she had all my powers, including the ability to send and hear images and thoughts. Yet we could no longer hear each other!
3
I found a victim as soon as we had crossed the river, and as soon as I spotted the man, there came the deepening awareness that everything I had done alone I would now do with her. She would watch this act, learn from it. I think the intimacy of it made the blood rush to my face. And as I lured the victim out of the tavern, as I teased him, maddened him, and then took him, I knew I was showing off for her, making it a little crueler, more playful. And when the kill came, it had an intensity to it that left me spent afterwards. She loved it. She watched everything as if she could suck up the very vision as she sucked. blood. We came together again and I took her in my arms and I felt her heat and she felt my heat. The blood was flooding my brain. And we just held each other, even the thin covering of our garments seeming alien, two burning statues in the dark. After that, the night lost all ordinary dimensions. In fact, it remains one of the longest nights I have ever endured in my immortal life. It was endless and fathomless and dizzying, and there were times when I wanted some defense against its pleasures and its surprises, arid I had none. And though I said her name over and over, to make it natural, she wasn't really Gabrielle yet to me. She was simply she, the one I had needed all of my life with all of my being. The only woman I had ever loved. Her actual death didn't take long. We sought out an empty cellar room where we remained until it was finished. And there I held on to her and talked to her as it went on. I told her everything that had happened to me again, in words this time. I told her all about the tower. I told everything that Magnus had said. I explained all the occurrences of the presence. And how I had become almost used to it and contemptuous of it, and not willing to chase it down. Over and over again I tried to send her images, but it was useless. I didn't say anything about it. Neither did she. But she listened very attentively. I talked to her about Nicki's suspicions, which of course he had not mentioned to her at all. And I explained that I feared for him even more now. Another open window, another empty room, and this time witnesses to verify the strangeness of it all. But never mind, I should tell Roget some story that would make it plausible. I should find some means to do right by Nicki, to break the chain of suspicions that was binding him to me. She seemed dimly fascinated by all of this, but it didn't really matter to her. What mattered to her was what lay before her now. And when her death was finished, she was unstoppable. There was no wall that she could not climb, no door she wouldn't enter, no rooftop terrain too steep. It was as if she did not believe she would live forever; rather she thought she had been granted this one night of supernatural vitality and all things must be known and accomplished be
fore death would come for her at dawn. Many times I tried to persuade her to go home to the tower. As the hours passed, a spiritual exhaustion came over me. I needed to be quiet there, to think on what had happened. I'd open my eyes and see only blackness for an instant. But she wanted only experiment, adventure. She proposed that we enter the private dwellings of mortals now to search for the clothes she needed. She laughed when I said that I always purchased my clothes in the proper way.
"We can hear if a house is empty, " she said, moving swiftly through the streets, her eyes on the windows of the darkened mansions. "We can hear if the servants are asleep. " It made perfect sense, though I'd never attempted such a thing. And I was soon following her up narrow back stairs and down carpeted corridors, amazed at the ease of it all, and fascinated by the details of the informal chambers in which mortals lived. I found I liked to touch personal things: fans, snuffboxes, the newspaper the master of the house had been reading, his boots on the hearth. It was as much fun as peering into windows. But she had her purpose. In a lady's dressing room in a large St. Germain house, she found a fortune in lavish clothes to fit her new and fuller form. I helped to peel off the old taffeta and to dress her up in pink velvet, gathering her hair in tidy curls under an ostrich-plume hat. I was shocked again by the sight of her, and the strange eerie feeling of wandering with her through this over furnished house full of mortal scents. She gathered objects from the dressing table. A vial of perfume, a small gold pair of scissors. She looked at herself in the glass. I went to kiss her again and she didn't stop me. We were lovers kissing. And that was the picture we made together, white-faced lovers, as we rushed down the servants' stairs and out into the late evening streets. We wandered in and out of the Opera and the Comedie before they closed, then through the ball in the Palais Royal. It delighted her the way mortals saw us, but did not see us, how they were drawn to us, and completely deceived. We heard the presence very sharply after that, as we explored the churches, then again it was gone. We climbed belfries to survey our kingdom, and afterwards huddled in crowded coffeehouses for a little while merely to feel and smell the mortals around us, to exchange secret glances, to laugh softly, tete-a-tete. She fell into dream states, looking at the steam rising from the mug of coffee, at the layers of cigarette smoke hovering around the lamps. She loved the dark empty streets and the fresh air more than anything else. She wanted to climb up into the limbs of the trees and onto the rooftops again. She marveled that I didn't always travel through the city by means of the rooftops, or ride about atop carriages as we had done. Some time after midnight, we were in the deserted market, just walking hand in hand. We had just heard the presence again but neither of us could discern a disposition in it as we had before. It was puzzling me. But everything around us was astonishing her still-the refuse, the cats that chased the vermin, the bizarre stillness, the way that the darkest comers of the metropolis held no danger for us. She remarked on that. Perhaps it was that which enchanted her most of all, that we could slip past the dens of thieves unheard, that we could easily defeat anyone who should be fool enough to trouble us, that we were both visible and invisible, palpable and utterly unaccountable. I didn't rash her or question her. I was merely borne along with her and content and sometimes lost in my own thoughts about this unfamiliar content. And when a handsome, slightly built young man came riding through the darkened stalls I watched him as if he were an apparition, something coming from the land of the living into the land of the dead. He reminded me of Nicolas because of his dark hair and dark eyes, and something innocent yet brooding in the face. He shouldn't have been in the market alone. He was younger than Nicki and very foolish, indeed.