The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles)

by Rice, Anne

  I slipped my arm around his shoulder and we walked together away from the lights of the house. We walked past the great gray hulk of the copter and into the dry sunbaked field and towards the hills.

  I think to be this happy is to be miserable, to feel this much satisfaction is to burn.

  “Are you going to go through with it?” he asked. “The concert tomorrow night?”

  Danger to us all. Had it been a warning or a threat? “Yes, of course,” I said. “What in hell could stop me from it?”

  “I would like to stop you,” he answered. “I would have come sooner if I could. I spotted you a week ago, then lost you.”

  “And why do you want to stop me?”

  “You know why,” he said. “I want to talk to you.” So simple, the words, and yet they had such meaning.

  “There’ll be time after,” I answered. “ ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.’ Nothing is going to happen. You’ll see.” I kept glancing at him and away from him, as if his green eyes were hurting me. In modern parlance he was a laser beam. Deadly and delicate he seemed. His victims had always loved him.

  And I had always loved him, hadn’t I, no matter what happened, and how strong could love grow if you had eternity to nourish it, and it took only these few moments in time to renew its momentum, its heat?

  “How can you be sure of that, Lestat?” he asked. Intimate his speaking my name. And I had not brought myself to say Louis in that same natural way.

  We were walking slowly now, without direction, and his arm was around me loosely as mine was around him.

  “I have a battalion of mortals guarding us,” I said. “There’ll be bodyguards on the copter and in the limousine with my mortals. I’ll travel alone from the airport in the Porsche so I can more easily defend myself, but we’ll have a veritable motorcade. And just what can a handful of hateful twentieth-century fledglings do anyway? These idiot creatures use the telephone for their threats.”

  “There are more than a handful,” he said. “But what about Marius? Your enemies out there are debating it, whether the story of Marius was true, whether Those Who Must Be Kept exist or not—”

  “Naturally, and you, did you believe it?”

  “Yes, as soon as I read it,” he said. And there passed between us a moment of silence, in which perhaps we were both remembering the questing immortal of long ago who had asked me over and over, Where did it begin?

  Too much pain to be reinvoked. It was like taking pictures from the attic, cleaning away the dust and finding the colors still vibrant. And the pictures should have been portraits of dead ancestors and they were pictures of us.

  I made some little nervous mortal gesture, raked my hair back off my forehead, tried to feel the cool of the breeze.

  “What makes you so confident,” he asked, “that Marius won’t end this experiment as soon as you step on the stage tomorrow night?”

  “Do you think any of the old ones would do that?” I answered.

  He reflected for a long moment, slipping deep into his thoughts the way he used to do, so deep it was as if he forgot I was there. And it seemed that old rooms took shape around him, gaslight gave off its unsteady illumination, there came the sounds and scents of a former time from outside streets. We two in that New Orleans parlor, coal fire in the grate beneath the marble mantel, everything growing older except us.

  And he stood now a modern child in sagging sweater and worn denim gazing off towards the deserted hills. Disheveled, eyes sparked with an inner fire, hair mussed. He roused himself slowly as if coming back to life.

  “No. I think if the old ones trouble themselves with it at all, they will be too interested to do that.”

  “Are you interested?”

  “Yes, you know I am,” he said.

  And his face colored slightly. It became even more human. In fact, he looked more like a mortal man than any of our kind I’ve ever known. “I’m here, aren’t I?” he said. And I sensed a pain in him, running like a vein of ore through his whole being, a vein that could carry feeling to the coldest depths.

  I nodded. I took a deep breath and looked away from him, wishing I could say what I really wanted to say. That I loved him. But I couldn’t do that. The feeling was too strong.

  “Whatever happens, it will be worth it,” I said. “That is, if you and I, and Gabrielle, and Armand … and Marius are together even for a short while, it will be worth it. Suppose Pandora chooses to show herself. And Mael. And God only knows how many others. What if all the old ones come. It will be worth it, Louis. As for the rest, I don’t care.”

  “No, you care,” he said, smiling. He was deeply fascinated. “You’re just confident that it’s going to be exciting, and that whatever the battle, you’ll win.”

  I bowed my head. I laughed. I slipped my hands into the pockets of my pants the way mortal men did in this day and age, and I walked on through the grass. The field still smelled of sun even in the cool California night. I didn’t tell him about the mortal part, the vanity of wanting to perform, the eerie madness that had come over me when I saw myself on the television screen, saw my face on the album covers plastered to the windows of the North Beach record store. He followed at my side.

  “If the old ones really wanted to destroy me,” I said, “don’t you think it would already be done?”

  “No,” he said. “I saw you and I followed you. But before that, I couldn’t find you. As soon as I heard that you’d come out, I tried.”

  “How did you hear?” I asked.

  “There are places in all the big cities where the vampires meet,” he said. “Surely you know this by now.”

  “No, I don’t. Tell me,” I said.

  “They are the bars we call the Vampire Connection,” he said, smiling a little ironically as he said it. “They are frequented by mortals, of course, and known to us by their names. There is Dr. Polidori in London, and Lamia in Paris. There is Bela Lugosi in the city of Los Angeles, and Carmilla and Lord Ruthven in New York. Here in San Francisco we have the most beautiful of them all, possibly, the cabaret called Dracula’s Daughter, on Castro Street.”

  I started laughing. I couldn’t help it and I could see that he was about to laugh, too.

  “And where are the names from Interview with the Vampire?” I asked with mock indignation.

  “Verboten,” he said with a little lift of the eyebrows. “They are not fictional. They are real. But I will tell you they are playing your video clips on Castro Street now. The mortal customers demand it. They toast you with their vodka Bloody Marys. The Dance of les Innocents is pounding through the walls.”

  A real laughing fit was definitely coming. I tried to stop it. I shook my head.

  “But you’ve effected something of a revolution in speech in the back room as well,” he continued in the same mock sober fashion, unable to keep his face entirely straight.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dark Trick, Dark Gift, Devil’s Road—they’re all bantering those words about, the crudest fledglings who never even styled themselves vampires. They’re imitating the book even though they condemn it utterly. They are loading themselves down with Egyptian jewelry. Black velvet is once again de rigueur.”

  “Too perfect,” I said. “But these places, what are they like?”

  “They’re saturated with the vampire trappings,” he said. “Posters from the vampire films adorn the walls, and the films themselves are projected continuously on high screens. The mortals who come are a regular freak show of theatrical types—punk youngsters, artists, those done up in black capes and white plastic fangs. They scarcely notice us. We are often drab by comparison. And in the dim lights we might as well be invisible, velvet and Egyptian jewelry and all. Of course, no one preys upon these mortal customers. We come to the vampire bars for information. The vampire bar is the safest place for a mortal in all Christendom. You cannot kill in the vampire bar.”

  “Wonder somebody didn’t think of it before,” I said.

&nbs
p; “They did think of it,” he said. “In Paris, it was the Théâtre des Vampyres.”

  “Of course,” I admitted. He went on:

  “The word went out a month ago on the Vampire Connection that you were back. And the news was old then. They said you were hunting New Orleans, and then they learned what you meant to do. They had early copies of your autobiography. There was endless talk about the video films.”

  “And why didn’t I see them in New Orleans?” I asked.

  “Because New Orleans has been for half a century Armand’s territory. No one dares to hunt New Orleans. They learned through mortal sources of information, out of Los Angeles and New York.”

  “I didn’t see Armand in New Orleans,” I said.

  “I know,” he answered. He looked troubled, confused for a moment.

  I felt a little tightening in the region of the heart.

  “No one knows where Armand is,” he said a little dully. “But when he was there, he killed the young ones. They left New Orleans to him. They say that many of the old ones do that, kill the young ones. They say it of me, but it isn’t so. I haunt San Francisco like a ghost. I do not trouble anyone save my unfortunate mortal victims.”

  All this didn’t surprise me much.

  “There are too many of us,” he said, “as there always have been. And there is much warring. And a coven in any given city is only a means by which three or more powerful ones agree not to destroy each other, and to share the territory according to the rules.”

  “The rules, always the rules,” I said.

  “They are different now, and more stringent. Absolutely no evidence of the kill must ever be left about. Not a single corpse must be left for mortals to investigate.”

  “Of course.”

  “And there must be no exposure whatsoever in the world of close-up photography and zoom lenses, of freeze-frame video examination—no risk that could lead to capture, incarceration, and scientific verification by the mortal world.”

  I nodded. But my pulse was racing. I loved being the outlaw, the one who had already broken every single law. And so they were imitating my book, were they? Oh, it was started already. Wheels set into motion.

  “Lestat, you think you understand,” he said patiently, “but do you? Let the world have but one tiny fragment of our tissue for their microscopes, and there will be no arguments anymore about legend or superstition. The proof will be there.”

  “I don’t agree with you, Louis,” I said. “It isn’t that simple.”

  “They have the means to identify and classify us, to galvanize the human race against us.”

  “No, Louis. Scientists in this day and age are witch doctors perpetually at war. They quarrel over the most rudimentary questions. You would have to spread that supernatural tissue to every microscope in the world and even then the public might not believe a word of it.”

  He reflected for a moment.

  “One capture then,” he said. “One living specimen in their hands.”

  “Even that wouldn’t do it,” I said. “And how could they ever hold me?”

  But it was too lovely to contemplate—the chase, the intrigue, the possible capture and escape. I loved it.

  He was smiling now in a strange way. Full of disapproval and delight.

  “You are madder than you ever were,” he said under his breath. “Madder than when you used to go about New Orleans deliberately scaring people in the old days.”

  I laughed and laughed. But then I got quiet. We didn’t have that much time before morning. And I could laugh all the way into San Francisco tomorrow night.

  “Louis, I’ve thought this over from every angle,” I said. “It will be harder to start a real war with mortals than you think—”

  “—And you’re bound and determined to start it, aren’t you? You want everyone, mortal or immortal, to come after you.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “Let it begin. And let them try to destroy us the way they have destroyed their other devils. Let them try to wipe us out.”

  He was watching me with that old expression of awe and incredulity that I had seen a thousand times on his face. I was a fool for it, as the expression goes.

  But the sky was paling overhead, the stars drifting steadily away. Only precious moments we had together before the early spring morning.

  “And so you really mean for it to happen,” he said earnestly, his tone gentler than before.

  “Louis, I mean for something and everything to happen,” I said. “I mean for all that we have been to change! What are we but leeches now—loathsome, secretive, without justification. The old romance is gone. So let us take on a new meaning. I crave the bright lights as I crave blood. I crave the divine visibility. I crave war.”

  “The new evil, to use your old words,” he said. “And this time it is the twentieth-century evil.”

  “Precisely,” I said. But again, I thought of the purely mortal impulse, the vain impulse, for worldly fame, acknowledgment. Faint blush of shame. It was all going to be such a pleasure.

  “But why, Lestat?” he asked a little suspiciously. “Why the danger, the risk? After all, you have done it. You have come back. You’re stronger than ever. You have the old fire as if it had never been lost, and you know how precious this is, this will simply to go on. Why risk it immediately? Have you forgotten what it was like when we had the world all around us, and no one could hurt us except ourselves?”

  “Is this an offer, Louis? Have you come back to me, as lovers say?”

  His eyes darkened and he looked away from me.

  “I’m not mocking you, Louis,” I said.

  “You’ve come back to me, Lestat,” he said evenly, looking at me again. “When I heard the first whispers of you at Dracula’s Daughter, I felt something that I thought was gone forever—” He paused.

  But I knew what he was talking about. He had already said it. And I had understood it centuries ago when I felt Armand’s despair after the death of the old coven. Excitement, the desire to continue, these things were priceless to us. All the more reason for the rock concert, the continuation, the war itself.

  “Lestat, don’t go on the stage tomorrow night,” he said. “Let the films and the book do what you want. But protect yourself. Let us come together and let us talk together. Let us have each other in this century the way we never did in the past. And I do mean all of us.”

  “Very tempting, beautiful one,” I said. “There were times in the last century when I would have given almost anything to hear those words. And we will come together, and we will talk, all of us, and we will have each other. It will be splendid, better than it ever was before. But I am going on the stage. I am going to be Lelio again the way I never was in Paris. I will be the Vampire Lestat for all to see. A symbol, an outcast, a freak of nature—something loved, something despised, all of those things. I tell you I can’t give it up. I can’t miss it. And quite frankly I am not the least afraid.”

  I braced myself for a coldness or a sadness to come over him. And I hated the approaching sun as much as I ever had in the past. He turned his back to it. The illumination was hurting him a little. But his face was as full of warm expression as before.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “I would like to go into San Francisco with you. I would like that very much. Will you take me with you?”

  I couldn’t immediately answer. Again, the sheer excitement was excruciating, and the love I felt for him was positively humiliating.

  “Of course I’ll take you with me,” I said.

  We looked at each other for a tense moment. He had to leave now. The morning had come for him.

  “One thing, Louis,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Those clothes. Impossible. I mean, tomorrow night, as they say in the twentieth century, you will lose that sweater and those pants.”

  The morning was too empty after he had gone. I stood still for a while thinking of that message, Danger. I scanned the distant mountains, the never endi
ng fields. Threat, warning—what did it matter? The young ones dial the telephones. The old ones raise their supernatural voices. Was it so strange?

  I could only think of Louis now, that he was with me. And of what it would be like when the others came.

  2

  The vast sprawling parking lots of the San Francisco Cow Palace were overflowing with frenzied mortals as our motorcade pushed through the gates, my musicians in the limousine ahead, Louis in the leather-lined Porsche beside me. Crisp and shining in the black-caped costume of the band, he looked as if he’d stepped out of the pages of his own story, his green eyes passing a little fearfully over the screaming youngsters and motorcycle guards who kept them back and away from us.

  The hall had been sold out for a month; the disappointed fans wanted the music broadcast outside so they could hear it. Beer cans littered the ground. Teenagers sat atop car roofs and on trunks and hoods, radios blaring The Vampire Lestat at appalling volume.

  Alongside my window, our manager ran on foot explaining that we would have the outside video screens and speakers. The San Francisco police had given the go-ahead to prevent a riot.

  I could feel Louis’s mounting anxiety. A pack of youngsters broke through the police lines and pressed themselves against his window as the motorcade made its sharp turn and plowed on towards the long ugly tube-shaped hall.

  I was positively enthralled with what was happening. And the recklessness in me was cresting. Again and again the fans surrounded the car before they were swept back, and I was beginning to understand how woefully I had underestimated this entire experience.

  The filmed rock shows I’d watched hadn’t prepared me for the crude electricity that was already coursing through me, the way the music was already surging in my head, the way the shame for my mortal vanity was evaporating.

  It was mayhem getting into the hall. Through a crush of guards, we ran into the heavily secured backstage area, Tough Cookie holding tight to me, Alex pushing Larry ahead of him.

  The fans tore at our hair, our capes. I reached back and gathered Louis under my wing and brought him through the doors with us.