by Rice, Anne
“Magnus,” he said. It was unobtrusive. It was caressing. “He went into the fire as you said?”
“I never said it,” I answered. The human sound of my own voice startled me. But I knew now he meant my thoughts of only moments before. “It’s quite true,” I answered. “He went into the fire.” Why should I deceive anyone on that account?
I tried to penetrate his mind. He knew I was doing it and he threw up against me such strange images that I gasped.
What was it I’d seen for an instant? I didn’t even know. Hell and heaven, or both made one, vampires in a paradise drinking blood from the very flowers that hung, pendulous and throbbing, from the trees.
I felt a wave of disgust. It was as if he had come into my private dreams like a succubus.
But he had stopped. He let his eyes pucker slightly and he looked down out of some vague respect. My disgust was withering him. He hadn’t anticipated my response. He hadn’t expected … what? Such strength?
Yes, and he was letting me know it in an almost courteous way.
I returned the courtesy. I let him see me in the tower room with Magnus; I recalled Magnus’s words before he went into the fire. I let him know all of it.
He nodded and when I told the words Magnus had said, there was a slight change in his face as if his forehead had gone smooth, or all of his skin had tightened. He gave me no such knowledge of himself in answer.
On the contrary, much to my surprise, he looked away from us to the main altar of the church. He glided past us, turning his back to us as if he had nothing to fear from us and had for the moment forgotten us.
He moved towards the great aisle and slowly up it, but he did not appear to walk in a human way. Rather he moved so swiftly from one bit of shadow to another that he seemed to vanish and reappear. Never was he visible in the light. And those scores of souls milling in the church had only to glance at him for him to instantly disappear.
I marveled at his skill, because that is all it was. And curious to see if I could move like that, I followed him to the choir. Gabrielle came after without a sound.
I think we both found it simpler than we had imagined it would be. Yet he was clearly startled when he saw us at his side.
And in the very act of being startled, he gave me a glimpse of his great weakness, pride. He was humiliated that we had crept up on him, moving so lightly and managing at the same time to conceal our thoughts.
But worse was to come. When he realized I had perceived this … it was revealed for a split second … he was doubly enraged. A withering heat emanated from him that wasn’t heat at all.
Gabrielle made a little scornful sound. Her eyes flashed on him for a second in some shimmer of communication between them that excluded me. He seemed puzzled.
But he was in the grip of some greater battle I was struggling to understand. He looked at the faithful around him, and at the altar and all the emblems of the Almighty and the Virgin Mary everywhere that he turned. He was perfectly the god out of Caravaggio, the light playing on the hard whiteness of his innocent-looking face.
Then he put his arm about my waist, slipping it under my cloak. His touch was so strange, so sweet and enticing, and the beauty of his face so entrancing that I didn’t move away. He put his other arm around Gabrielle’s waist, and the sight of them together, angel and angel, distracted me.
He said: You must come.
“Why, where?” Gabrielle asked. I felt an immense pressure. He was attempting to move me against my will, but he could not. I planted myself on the stone floor. I saw Gabrielle’s face harden as she looked at him. And again, he was amazed. He was maddened and he couldn’t conceal it from us.
So he had underestimated our physical strength as well as our mental strength. Interesting.
“You must come now,” he said, giving me the great force of his will, which I could see much too clearly to be fooled. “Come out and my followers won’t harm you.”
“You’re lying to us,” I said. “You sent your followers away, and you want us to come out before your followers return, because you don’t want them to see you come out of the church. You don’t want them to know you came into it!”
Again Gabrielle gave a little scornful laugh.
I put my hand on his chest and tried to move him away. He might have been as strong as Magnus. But I refused to be afraid. “Why don’t you want them to see?” I whispered, peering into his face.
The change in him was so startling and so ghastly that I found myself holding my breath. His angelic countenance appeared to wither, his eyes widening and his mouth twisting down in consternation. His entire body became quite deformed as if he were trying not to grit his teeth and clench his fists.
Gabrielle drew away. I laughed. I didn’t really mean to, but I couldn’t help it. It was horrifying. But it was also very funny.
With stunning suddenness this awful illusion, if that is what it was, faded, and he came back to himself. Even the sublime expression returned. He told me in a steady stream of thought that I was infinitely stronger than he supposed. But it would frighten the others to see him emerge from the church, and so we should go at once.
“Lies again,” Gabrielle whispered.
And I knew this much pride would forgive nothing. God help Nicolas if we couldn’t trick this one!
Turning, I took Gabrielle’s hand and we started down the aisle to the front doors, Gabrielle glancing back at him and to me questioningly, her face white and tense.
“Patience,” I whispered. I turned to see him far away from us, his back to the main altar, and his eyes were so big as he stared that he looked horrible to me, loathsome, like a ghost.
When I reached the vestibule I sent out my summons to the others with all my power. And I whispered aloud for Gabrielle as I did so. I told them to come back and into the church if they wanted to, that nothing could harm them, their leader was inside the church standing at the very altar, unharmed.
I spoke the words louder, pumping the summons under the words, and Gabrielle joined me, repeating the phrases in unison with me.
I felt him coming towards us from the main altar, and then suddenly I lost him. I didn’t know where he was behind us.
He grabbed hold of me suddenly, materializing at my side, and Gabrielle was thrown to the floor. He was attempting to lift me and pitch me through the door.
But I fought him. And desperately collecting everything I remembered of Magnus—his strange walk, and this creature’s strange manner of moving—I hurled him, not off balance as one might do to a heavy mortal, but straight up in the air.
Just as I suspected, he went over in a somersault, crashing into the wall.
Mortals stirred. They saw movement, heard noises. But he’d vanished again. And Gabrielle and I looked no different from other young gentlemen in the shadows.
I motioned for Gabrielle to get out of the way. Then he appeared, shooting towards me, but I perceived what was to happen and stepped aside.
Some twenty feet away from me, I saw him sprawled on the stones staring at me with positive awe, as if I were a god. His long auburn hair was tossed about, his brown eyes enormous as he looked up. And for all the gentle innocence of his face, his will was rolling over me, a hot stream of commands, telling me I was weak and imperfect and a fool, and I would be torn limb from limb by his followers as soon as they appeared. They would roast my mortal lover slowly till he died.
I laughed silently. This was as ludicrous as a fight out of the old commedia.
Gabrielle was staring from one to the other of us. I sent the summons again to the others, and this time when I sent it, I heard them answering, questioning.
“Come into the church.” I repeated it over and over, even as he rose and ran at me again in blind and clumsy rage. Gabrielle caught him just as I did, and we both had hold of him and he couldn’t move.
In a moment of absolute horror for me he tried to sink his fangs into my neck. I saw his eyes round and empty as the fangs descended ove
r his drawn lip. I flung him back and again he vanished.
They were coming nearer, the others.
“He’s in the church, your leader, look at him!” I repeated it. “And any of you can come into the church. You won’t be hurt.”
I heard Gabrielle let out a scream of warning. And too late. He rose up right in front of me, as if out of the floor itself, and struck my jaw, jerking my head back so that I saw the church ceiling. And before I could recover, he had dealt me one fine blow in the middle of the back that sent me flying out the door and onto the stones of the square.
1
I could see nothing but the rain. But I could hear them all around me. And he was giving his command.
“They have no great power, these two,” he was telling them in thoughts that had a curious simplicity to them, as if he were commanding vagrant children. “Take them both prisoner.”
Gabrielle said: “Lestat, don’t fight. It’s useless to prolong it.” And I knew she was right. But I’d never surrendered to anybody in my life. And pulling her with me past the Hôtel-Dieu, I made for the bridge.
We tore through the press of wet cloaks and mud-spattered carriages, yet they were gaining upon us, rushing so fast they were almost invisible to mortals, and with only a little fear of us now.
In the dark streets of the Left Bank, the game was finished.
White faces appeared above and below me as though they were demonic cherubs, and when I tried to draw my weapon, I felt their hands on my arms. I heard Gabrielle say, “Let it be done.”
I held fast to my sword but I couldn’t stop them from lifting me off the ground. They were lifting Gabrielle too.
And in a blaze of hideous images, I understood where they were taking us. It was to les Innocents, only yards away. I could already see the flicker of the bonfires that burned each night among the stinking open graves, the flames that were supposed to drive away the effluvia.
I locked my arm around Gabrielle’s neck and cried out that I couldn’t bear that stench, but they were carrying us on swiftly through the darkness, through the gates and past the white marble crypts.
“Surely you can’t endure it,” I said, struggling. “So why do you live among the dead when you were made to feed on life?”
But I felt such revulsion now I couldn’t keep it up, the verbal or physical struggle. All around us lay bodies in various states of decomposition, and even from the rich sepulchers there came that reek.
And as we moved into the darker part of the cemetery, as we entered an enormous sepulcher, I realized that they too hated the stench, as much as I. I could feel their disgust, and yet they opened their mouths and their lungs as if they were eating it. Gabrielle was trembling against me, her fingers digging into my neck.
Through another doorway we passed, and then, by dim torchlight, down an earthen stairs.
The smell grew stronger. It seemed to ooze from the mud walls. I turned my face down and vomited a thin stream of glittering blood upon the steps beneath me, which vanished as we moved swiftly on.
“Live among graves,” I said furiously. “Tell me, why do you suffer hell already by your own choice?”
“Silence,” whispered one of them close to me, a dark-eyed female with a witch’s mop of hair. “You blasphemer,” she said. “You cursed profaner.”
“Don’t be a fool for the devil, darling!” I sneered. We were eye to eye. “Unless he treats you a damn sight better than the Almighty!”
She laughed. Or rather she started to laugh, and she stopped as if she weren’t allowed to laugh. What a gay and interesting little get-together this was going to be!
We were going lower and lower into the earth.
Flickering light, the scrape of their bare feet on the dirt, filthy rags brushing my face. For an instant, I saw a grinning skull. Then another, then a heap of them filling a niche in the wall.
I tried to wrench free and my foot hit another heap and sent the bones clattering on the stairs. The vampires tightened their grip, trying to lift us higher. Now we passed the ghastly spectacle of rotted corpses fixed in the walls like statues, bones swathed in rotted rags.
“This is too disgusting!” I said with my teeth clenched.
We had come to the foot of the steps and were being carried through a great catacomb. I could hear the low rapid beat of kettledrums.
Torches blazed ahead, and over a chorus of mournful wails, there came other cries, distant but filled with pain. Yet something beyond these puzzling cries had caught my attention.
Amid all the foulness, I sensed a mortal was near. It was Nicolas and he was alive and I could hear him, the warm, vulnerable current of his thoughts mingled with his scent. And something was terribly wrong with his thoughts. They were chaos.
I couldn’t know if Gabrielle had caught it.
We were quite suddenly thrown down together, in the dust. And the others backed away from us.
I climbed to my feet, lifting Gabrielle with me. And I saw that we were in a great domed chamber, scarcely illuminated by three torches which the vampires held to form a triangle, in the center of which we stood.
Something huge and black to the back of the chamber; smell of wood and pitch, smell of damp, moldering cloth, smell of living mortal. Nicolas there.
Gabrielle’s hair had come loose entirely from the ribbon, and it fell around her shoulders as she cleaved to me, looking about with seemingly calm, cautious eyes.
Wails rose all around us, but the most piercing supplications came from those other beings we had heard before, creatures somewhere deep in the earth.
And I realized these were entombed vampires screaming, screaming for blood, and screaming for forgiveness and release, screaming even for the fires of hell. The sound was as unbearable as the stench.
No real thoughts from Nicki, only the formless shimmer of his mind. Was he dreaming? Was he mad?
The roll of the drums was very loud and very close, and yet those screams pierced the rumbling again and again without rhythm or warning. The wailing of those nearest us died away, but the drums went on, the pounding suddenly coming from inside my head.
Trying desperately not to clamp my hands to my ears, I looked about.
A great circle had been formed, and there were ten of them at least, these creatures. I saw young ones, old ones, men and women, a young boy—and all clothed in the remnants of human garments, caked with earth, feet bare, hair tangled with filth. There was the woman I had spoken to on the stairs, her well-shaped body clothed in a filthy robe, her quick black eyes glinting like jewels in the dirt as she studied us. And beyond these, the advance guard, were a pair in the shadows beating the kettledrums.
I begged silently for strength. I tried to hear Nicolas without actually thinking of him. Solemn vow: I shall get us all out of here, though at the moment I do not know exactly how.
The drumbeat was slowing, becoming an ugly cadence that made the alien feeling of fear a fist against my throat. One of the torchbearers approached.
I could feel the anticipation of the others, a palpable excitement as the flames were thrust at me.
I snatched the torch from the creature, twisting his right hand until he was flung down on his knees. With a hard kick, I sent him sprawling, and as the others rushed in, I swung the torch wide driving them back.
Then defiantly, I threw down the torch.
This caught them off guard and I sensed a sudden quietness. The excitement was drained away, or rather it had lapsed into something more patient and less volatile.
The drums beat insistently, but it seemed they were ignoring the drums. They were staring at the buckles on our shoes, at our hair, and at our faces, with such distress they appeared menacing and hungry. And the young boy, with a look of anguish, reached out to touch Gabrielle.
“Get back!” I hissed. And he obeyed, snatching up the torch from the ground as he did.
But I knew it for certain now—we were surrounded by envy and curiosity, and this was the strongest advantage we
possessed.
I looked from one to the other of them. And quite slowly, I commenced to brush the filth from my frock coat and breeches. I smoothed my cloak as I straightened my shoulders. Then I ran a hand through my hair, and stood with my arms folded, the picture of righteous dignity, gazing about.
Gabrielle gave a faint smile. She stood composed, her hand on the hilt of her sword.
The effect of this on the others was universal amazement. The dark-eyed female was enthralled. I winked at her. She would have been gorgeous if someone had thrown her into a waterfall and held her there for half an hour and I told her so silently. She took two steps backwards and pulled closed her robe over her breasts. Interesting. Very interesting indeed.
“What is the explanation for all this?” I asked, staring at them one by one as if they were quite peculiar. Again Gabrielle gave her faint smile.
“What are you meant to be?” I demanded. “The images of chain-rattling ghosts who haunt cemeteries and ancient castles?”
They were glancing to one another, getting uneasy. The drums had stopped.
“My childhood nurse many a time thrilled me with tales of such fiends,” I said. “Told me they might at any moment leap out of the suits of armor in our house to carry me away screaming.” I stomped my foot and dashed forward. “IS THAT WHAT YOU ARE!” They shrieked and shrank back.
The black-eyed woman didn’t move, however.
I laughed softly.
“And your bodies are just like ours, aren’t they?” I asked slowly. “Smooth, without flaw, and in your eyes I can see evidence of my own powers. Most strange …”
Confusion coming from them. And the howling in the walls seemed fainter as if the entombed were listening in spite of their pain.
“Is it great fun living in filth and stench such as this?” I asked. “Is that why you do it?”
Fear. Envy again. How had we managed to escape their fate?
“Our leader is Satan,” said the dark-eyed woman sharply. Cultured voice. She’d been something to reckon with when she was mortal. “And we serve Satan as we are meant to do.”
“Why?” I asked politely. Consternation all around.