by Rice, Anne
I saw a bird soaring out of a cave above the open sea. And there was something terrifying about the bird and the endless waves over which it flew. Higher and higher it went and the sky turned to silver and then gradually the silver faded and the sky went dark. The darkness of evening, nothing to fear, really, nothing. Blessed darkness. But it was falling gradually and inexorably over nothing save this one tiny creature cawing in the wind above a great wasteland that was the world. Empty caves, empty sands, empty sea.
All I had ever loved to look upon, or listen to, or felt with my hands was gone, or never existed, and the bird, circling and gliding, flew on and on, upwards past me, or more truly past no one, holding the entire landscape, without history or meaning, in the flat blackness of one tiny eye.
I screamed but without a sound. I felt my mouth full of blood and each swallow passing down my throat and into fathomless thirst. And I wanted to say, yes, I understand now, I understand how terrible, how unbearable, this darkness. I didn’t know. Couldn’t know. The bird sailing on through the darkness over the barren shore, the seamless sea. Dear God, stop it. Worse than the horror in the inn. Worse than the helpless trumpeting of the fallen horse in the snow. But the blood was the blood after all, and the heart—the luscious heart that was all hearts—was right there, on tiptoe against my lips.
Now, my love, now’s the moment. I can swallow the life that beats from your heart and send you into the oblivion in which nothing may ever be understood or forgiven, or I can bring you to me.
I pushed him backwards. I held him to me like a crushed thing. But the vision wouldn’t stop.
His arms slipped around my neck, his face wet, eyes rolling up into his head. Then his tongue shot out. It licked hard at the gash I had made for him in my own throat. Yes, eager.
But please stop this vision. Stop the upward flight and the great slant of the colorless landscape, the cawing that meant nothing over the howl of the wind. The pain is nothing compared to this darkness. I don’t want to … I don’t want to …
But it was dissolving. Slowly dissolving.
And finally it was finished. The veil of silence had come down, as it had with her. Silence. He was separate. And I was holding him away from me, and he was almost falling, his hands to his mouth, the blood running down his chin in rivulets. His mouth was open and a dry sound came out of it, in spite of the blood, a dry scream.
And beyond him, and beyond the remembered vision of the metallic sea and the lone bird who was its only witness—I saw her in the doorway and her hair was a Virgin Mary veil of gold around her shoulders, and she said with the saddest expression on her face:
“Disaster, my son.”
By midnight it was clear that he would not speak or answer to any voice, or move of his own volition. He remained still and expressionless in the places to which he was taken. If the death pained him he gave no sign. If the new vision delighted him, he kept it to himself. Not even the thirst moved him.
And it was Gabrielle who, after studying him quietly for hours, took him in hand, cleaning him and putting new clothes on him. Black wool she chose, one of the few somber coats I owned. And modest linen, that made him look oddly like a young cleric, a little too serious, a little naive.
And in the silence of the crypt as I watched them, I knew without doubt that they could hear each other’s thoughts. Without a word she guided him through the grooming. Without a word she sent him back to the bench by the fire.
Finally, she said, “He should hunt now,” and when she glanced at him, he rose without looking at her as if pulled by a string.
Numbly I watched them going. Heard their feet on the stairs. And then I crept up after them, stealthily, and holding to the bars of the gate I watched them move, two feline spirits, across the field.
The emptiness of the night was an indissoluble cold settling over me, closing me in. Not even the fire on the hearth warmed me when I returned to it.
Emptiness here. And the quiet I had told myself that I wanted—just to be alone after the grisly struggle in Paris. Quiet, and the realization, which I could not bring myself to confess to her, the realization gnawing at my insides like a starved animal—that I couldn’t stand the sight of him now.
5
When I opened my eyes the next night, I knew what I meant to do. Whether or not I could stand to look at him wasn’t important. I had made him this, and I had to rouse him from his stupor somehow.
The hunt hadn’t changed him, though apparently he’d drunk and killed well enough. And now it was up to me to protect him from the revulsion I felt, and to go into Paris and get the one thing that might bring him around.
The violin was all he’d ever loved when he was alive. Maybe now it would awaken him. I’d put it in his hands, and he’d want to play it again, he’d want to play it with his new skill, and everything would change and the chill in my heart would somehow melt.
As soon as Gabrielle rose I told her what I meant to do.
“But what about the others?” she said. “You can’t go riding into Paris alone.”
“Yes, I can,” I said. “You’re needed here with him. If the little pests should come round, they could lure him into the open, the way he is now. And besides, I want to know what’s happening under les Innocents. If we have a real truce, I want to know.”
“I don’t like your going,” she said, shaking her head. “I tell you, if I didn’t believe we should speak to the leader again, that we had things to learn from him and the old woman, I’d be for leaving Paris tonight.”
“And what could they possibly teach us?” I said coldly. “That the sun really revolves around the earth? That the earth is flat?” But the bitterness of my words made me feel ashamed.
One thing they could tell me was why the vampires I’d made could hear each other’s thoughts when I could not. But I was too crestfallen over my loathing of Nicki to think of all these things.
I only looked at her and thought how glorious it had been to see the Dark Trick work its magic in her, to see it restore her youthful beauty, render her again the goddess she’d been to me when I was a little child. To see Nicki change had been to see him die.
Maybe without reading the words in my soul she understood it only too well.
We embraced slowly. “Be careful,” she said.
* * *
I should have gone to the flat right away to look for his violin. And there was still my poor Roget to deal with. Lies to tell. And this matter of getting out of Paris—it seemed more and more the thing for us to do.
But for hours I did just what I wanted. I hunted the Tuileries and the boulevards, pretending there was no coven under les Innocents, that Nicki was alive still and safe somewhere, that Paris was all mine again.
But I was listening for them every moment. I was thinking about the old queen. And I heard them when I least expected it, on the boulevard du Temple, as I drew near to Renaud’s.
Strange that they’d be in the places of light, as they called them. But within seconds, I knew that several of them were hiding behind the theater. And there was no malice this time, only a desperate excitement when they sensed that I was near.
Then I saw the white face of the woman vampire, the dark-eyed pretty one with the witch’s hair. She was in the alleyway beside the stage door, and she darted forward to beckon to me.
I rode back and forth for a few moments. The boulevard was the usual spring evening panorama: hundreds of strollers amid the stream of carriage traffic, lots of street musicians, jugglers and tumblers, the lighted theaters with their doors open to invite the crowd. Why should I leave it to talk to these creatures? I listened. There were four of them actually, and they were desperately waiting for me to come. They were in terrible fear.
All right. I turned the horse and rode into the alley and all the way to the back where they hovered together against the stone wall.
The gray-eyed boy was there, which surprised me, and he had a dazed expression on his face. A tall blond male vampire stood behind him
with a handsome woman, both of them swathed in rags like lepers. It was the pretty one, the dark-eyed one who had laughed at my little jest on the stairs under les Innocents, who spoke:
“You have to help us!” she whispered.
“I do?” I tried to steady the mare. She didn’t like their company. “Why do I have to help you?” I demanded.
“He’s destroying the coven,” she said.
“Destroying us …” the boy said. But he didn’t look at me. He was staring at the stones in front of him, and from his mind I caught flashes of what was happening, of the pyre lighted, of Armand forcing his followers into the fire.
I tried to get this out of my head. But the images were now coming from all of them. The dark-eyed pretty one looked directly into my eyes as she strove to sharpen the pictures—Armand swinging a great charred beam of wood as he drove the others into the blaze, then stabbing them down into the flames with the beam as they struggled to escape.
“Good Lord, there were twelve of you!” I said. “Couldn’t you fight?”
“We did and we are here,” said the woman. “He burned six together, and the rest of us fled. In terror, we sought strange resting places for the day. We had never done this before, slept away from our sacred graves. We didn’t know what would happen to us. And when we rose he was there. Another two he managed to destroy. So we are all that is left. He has even broken open the deep chambers and burned the starved ones. He has broken loose the earth to block the tunnels to our meeting place.”
The boy looked up slowly.
“You did this to us,” he whispered. “You have brought us all down.”
The woman stepped in front of him.
“You must help us,” she said. “Make a new coven with us. Help us to exist as you exist.” She glanced impatiently at the boy.
“But the old woman, the great one?” I asked.
“It was she who commenced it,” said the boy bitterly. “She threw herself into the fire. She said she would go to join Magnus. She was laughing. It was then that he drove the others into the flames as we fled.”
I bowed my head. So she was gone. And all she had known and witnessed had gone with her, and what had she left behind but the simple one, the vengeful one, the wicked child who believed what she had known to be false.
“You must help us,” said the dark-eyed woman. “You see, it’s his right as coven master to destroy those who are weak, those who can’t survive.”
“He couldn’t let the coven fall into chaos,” said the other woman vampire who stood behind the boy. “Without the faith in the Dark Ways, the others might have blundered, alarmed the mortal populace. But if you help us to form a new coven, to perfect ourselves in new ways …”
“We are the strongest of the coven,” said the man. “And if we can fend him off long enough, and manage to continue without him, then in time he may leave us alone.”
“He will destroy us,” the boy muttered. “He will never leave us alone. He will lie in wait for the moment when we separate …”
“He isn’t invincible,” said the tall male. “And he’s lost all conviction. Remember that.”
“And you have Magnus’s tower, a safe place …” said the boy despairingly as he looked up at me.
“No, that I can’t share with you,” I said. “You have to win this battle on your own.”
“But surely you can guide us …” said the man.
“You don’t need me,” I said. “What have you already learned from my example? What did you learn from the things I said last night?”
“We learned more from what you said to him afterwards,” said the dark-eyed woman. “We heard you speak to him of a new evil, an evil for these times destined to move through the world in handsome human guise.”
“So take on the guise,” I said. “Take the garments of your victims, and take the money from their pockets. And you can then move among mortals as I do. In time you can gain enough wealth to acquire your own little fortress, your secret sanctuary. Then you will no longer be beggars or ghosts.”
I could see the desperation in their faces. Yet they listened attentively.
“But our skin, the timbre of our voices …” said the dark-eyed woman.
“You can fool mortals. It’s very easy. It just takes a little skill.”
“But how do we start?” said the boy dully, as if he were only reluctantly being brought into it. “What sort of mortals do we pretend to be?”
“Choose for yourself!” I said. “Look around you. Masquerade as gypsies if you will—that oughtn’t to be too difficult—or better yet mummers,” I glanced towards the lights of the boulevard.
“Mummers!” said the dark-eyed woman with a little spark of excitement.
“Yes, actors. Street performers. Acrobats. Make yourselves acrobats. Surely you’ve seen them out there. You can cover your white faces with greasepaint, and your extravagant gestures and facial expressions won’t even be noticed. You couldn’t choose a more nearly perfect disguise than that. On the boulevard you’ll see every manner of mortal that dwells in this city. You’ll learn all you need to know.”
She laughed and glanced at the others. The man was deep in thought, the other woman musing, the boy unsure.
“With your powers, you can become jugglers and tumblers easily,” I said. “It would be nothing for you. You could be seen by thousands who’d never guess what you are.”
“That isn’t what happened with you on the stage of this little theater,” said the boy coldly. “You put terror into their hearts.”
“Because I chose to do it,” I said. Tremor of pain. “That’s my tragedy. But I can fool anyone when I want to and so can you.”
I reached into my pockets and drew out a handful of gold crowns. I gave them to the dark-eyed woman. She took them in both hands and stared at them as if they were burning her. She looked up and in her eyes I saw the image of myself on Renaud’s stage performing those ghastly feats that had driven the crowd into the streets.
But she had another thought in her mind. She knew the theater was abandoned, that I’d sent the troupe off.
And for one second, I considered it, letting the pain double itself and pass through me, wondering if the others could feel it. What did it really matter, after all?
“Yes, please,” said the pretty one. She reached up and touched my hand with her cool white fingers. “Let us inside the theater! Please.” She turned and looked at the back doors of Renaud’s.
Let them inside. Let them dance on my grave.
But there might be old costumes there still, the discarded trappings of a troupe that had had all the money in the world to buy itself new finery. Old pots of white paint. Water still in the barrels. A thousand treasures left behind in the haste of departure.
I was numb, unable to consider all of it, unwilling to reach back to embrace all that had happened there.
“Very well,” I said, looking away as if some little thing had distracted me. “You can go into the theater if you wish. You can use whatever is there.”
She drew closer and pressed her lips suddenly to the back of my hand.
“We won’t forget this,” she said. “My name is Eleni, this boy is Laurent, the man here is Félix, and the woman with him, Eugénie. If Armand moves against you, he moves against us.”
“I hope you prosper,” I said, and strangely enough, I meant it. I wondered if any of them, with all their Dark Ways and Dark Rituals, had ever really wanted this nightmare that we all shared. They’d been drawn into it as I had, really. And we were all Children of Darkness now, for better or worse.
“But be wise in what you do here,” I warned. “Never bring victims here or kill near here. Be clever and keep your hiding place safe.”
It was three o’clock before I rode over the bridge on to the Ile St.-Louis. I had wasted enough time. And now I had to find the violin.
But as soon as I approached Nicki’s house on the quai I saw that something was wrong. The windows were empty. All th
e drapery had been pulled down, and yet the place was full of light, as if candles were burning inside by the hundreds. Most strange. Roget couldn’t have taken possession of the flat yet. Not enough time had passed to assume that Nicki had met with foul play.
Quickly, I went up over the roof and down the wall to the courtyard window, and saw that the drapery had been stripped away there too.
And candles were burning in all the candelabra and in the wall sconces. And some were even stuck in their own wax on the pianoforte and the desk. The room was in total disarray.
Every book had been pulled off the shelf. And some of the books were in fragments, pages broken out. Even the music had been emptied sheet by sheet onto the carpet, and all the pictures were lying about on the tables with other small possessions—coins, money, keys.
Perhaps the demons had wrecked the place when they took Nicki. But who had lighted all these candles? It didn’t make sense.
I listened. No one in the flat. Or so it seemed. But then I heard not thoughts, but tiny sounds. I narrowed my eyes for a moment, just concentrating, and it came to me that I was hearing pages turn, and then something being dropped. More pages turning, stiff, old parchment pages. Then again the book dropped.
I raised the window as quietly as I could. The little sounds continued, but no scent of human, no pulse of thought.
Yet there was a smell here. Something stronger than the stale tobacco and the candle wax. The smell the vampires carried with them from the cemetery soil.
More candles in the hallway. Candles in the bedroom and the same disarray, books open as they lay in careless piles, the bedclothes snarled, the pictures in a heap. Cabinets emptied, drawers pulled out.
And no violin anywhere, I managed to note that.
And those little sounds coming from another room, pages being turned very fast.
Whoever he was—and of course I knew who he had to be—he did not give a damn that I was there! He had not even stopped to take a breath.
I went farther down the hall and stood in the door of the library and found myself staring right at him as he continued with his task.