by Rice, Anne
“Louis!” I held fast to him. “You can’t refuse me.”
“Ah, but I can and I have.”
I could feel him stiffening, trying to withdraw without bruising me. I held him ever more tightly, refusing to back away.
“You won’t find me again here. But you know where to find her. She’s waiting for you. Don’t you see your own victory? Mortal again, and so very, very young. Mortal again, and so very, very beautiful. Mortal again, with all your knowledge and with the same indomitable will.”
Firmly and easily he removed my arms and pushed me back, closing his hands over mine as he held me away from him.
“Good-bye, Lestat,” he said. “Perhaps the others will come to you. In time, when they feel you’ve paid enough.”
I gave one last cry, trying to free my hands, trying to fix upon him, for I knew full well what he meant to do.
In a dark flash of movement, he was gone, and I was lying on the floor.
The candle had fallen over on the desk and had gone out. Only the light of the dying fire filled the little room. And the shutters of the door stood open, and the rain was falling, thin and quiet, yet steady. And I knew I was completely alone.
I had fallen to one side, my hands out before me to break the fall. And as I rose now, I cried out to him, praying that somehow he could hear me, no matter how far away he’d gone.
“Louis, help me. I don’t want to be alive. I don’t want to be mortal! Louis, don’t leave me here! I can’t bear it! I don’t want it! I don’t want to save my soul!”
How long I repeated these themes I don’t know. Finally, I was too exhausted to continue; and the sounds of this mortal voice and all its desperation were hurtful to my own ears.
I sat on the floor, one leg crooked beneath me, my elbow resting on my knee, my fingers in my hair. Mojo had come forward, fearfully, and lay now beside me, and I leaned down and pressed my forehead into his fur.
The little fire was almost gone out. The rain hissed and sighed and redoubled its strength, but falling straight from the heavens without a breath of hateful wind.
Finally I looked up at this dark, dismal little place, at its jumble of books and old statues, at the dust and filth everywhere, and at the glowing embers heaped in the little hearth. How weary I was; how seared from my own anger; how close to despair.
Had I ever in all my misery been this completely without hope?
My eyes moved sluggishly to the doorway, and to the steady downpour, and the menacing darkness which lay beyond. Yes, go out in it, you and Mojo, who will of course love it as he loved the snow. You have to go out in it. You have to get out of this absymal little house, and find some comfortable shelter where you can rest.
My rooftop apartment, surely there was some way I could break into it. Surely … some way. And then the sun was coming in a few hours, wasn’t it? Ah, this my lovely city, beneath the warm light of the sun.
For God’s sake, don’t start weeping again. You need to rest and to think.
But first, before you go, why don’t you burn down his house! Let the big Victorian alone. He doesn’t love it. But burn his little shack!
I could feel myself breaking into an irresistible and malicious smile, even as the tears still hovered in my eyes.
Yes, burn it down! He deserves it. And of course he’s taken his writings with him, yes, indeed he has, but all his books will go up in smoke! And that’s exactly what he deserves.
At once I gathered up the paintings—a gorgeous Monet, a couple of small Picassos, and a ruby-red egg tempera panel of the medieval period, all deteriorating badly, of course—and I rushed out and into the old empty Victorian mansion, and stashed these in a darkened corner which seemed both safe and dry.
Then I went back into the little house, snatched up his candle, and thrust it into the remains of the fire. At once the soft ashes exploded with tiny orange sparks; and the sparks fastened themselves upon the wick.
“Oh, you deserve this, you treacherous ungrateful bastard!” I seethed as I put the flame to the books piled against the wall, carefully ruffling their pages to get them going. And then to an old coat thrown over a wooden chair, which went up like straw, and then to the red velvet cushions of the chair that had been mine. Ah, yes, burn it, all of it.
I kicked a pile of moidering magazines beneath his desk and ignited them. I touched the flame to one book after another, and tossed these like flaming coals into all parts of the little house.
Mojo edged away from these little bonfires, and finally went out into the rain, where he stood at a distance, gazing at me through the open door.
Ah, but things were moving too slowly. And Louis has a drawer full of candles; how could I have forgotten them—curse this mortal brain!—and now I drew them out, some twenty of them, and started setting the wax to burning fiercely, never mind the wick, and flinging them into the red velvet chair to make a great heat. I hurled them at the heaps of debris that remained, and I flung burning books at the wet shutters, and ignited the old fragments of curtain which here and there hung forgotten and neglected from old rods. I kicked out holes in the rotted plaster and threw the burning candles in upon the old lathing, and then I leant down and set afire the worn threadbare rugs, wrinkling them to let the air move underneath.
Within minutes the place was full of raging blazes, but the red chair and the desk were the greatest of all. I ran out into the rain, and I saw the fire flickering through the dark broken slats.
A damp ugly smoke rose as the fire licked at the wet shutters, as it curled up and out of the windows into the wet mass of the Queen’s Wreath! Oh, cursed rain! But then as the blaze of the desk and chair grew ever brighter, the entire little building exploded with orange flames! Shutters were blown into the darkness; a great hole burst in the roof.
“Yes, yes, burn!” I shouted, the rain pelting my face, my eyelids. I was practically jumping up and down with joy. Mojo backed towards the darkened mansion, lowering his head. “Burn, burn,” I declared. “Louis, I wish I could burn you! I’d do it! Oh, if only I knew where you lie by day!”
But even in my glee I realized I was weeping. I was wiping at my mouth with the back of my hand, and crying. “How could you leave me like this! How could you do it! I curse you.” And dissolving into tears, I went down on my knees again against the rainy earth.
I sank back on my heels, hands folded in front of me, beaten and miserable and staring at the great fire. Lights were snapping on in distant houses. I could hear the thin scream of a siren coming. I knew I should go.
Yet still I knelt there, and I felt almost stuporous when Mojo suddenly roused me with one of his deep, most menacing growls. I realized he had come to stand beside me, and was pressing his wet fur to my very face, and that he was peering off towards the burning house.
I moved to catch hold of his collar and was about to retreat when I made out the source of his alarm. It was no helpful mortal. But rather an unearthly and dim white figure standing still as an apparition near the burning building, luridly illuminated by the blaze.
Even with these weak mortal eyes, I saw it was Marius! And I saw the expression of wrath stamped on his face. Never have I seen such a perfect reflection of fury, and there was not the slightest doubt that it was what he meant for me to see.
My lips parted but my voice had died in my throat. All I could do was stretch out my arms to him, to send from my heart a silent plea for mercy and for help.
Again the dog gave his fierce warning and seemed about to spring.
And as I watched helplessly, and trembling uncontrollably, the figure turned its back slowly, and giving me one last angry, disdainful look, disappeared.
It was then that I sprang to life, crying his name. “Marius!” I rose to my feet, calling louder and louder. “Marius, don’t leave me here. Help me!” I reached up into the skies. “Marius,” I roared.
But it was useless and I knew it.
The rain soaked through my coat. It soaked into my shoes. My hair wa
s slick and wet with it, and it didn’t matter now whether or not I’d been crying, because the rain had washed away the tears.
“You think I’m defeated,” I whispered. What need was there to shout for him? “You think you’ve passed your judgment, and that’s the end of it. Oh, you think it is as simple as that. Well you are wrong. I shall never have vengeance for this moment. But you will see me again. You will see me again.”
I bowed my head.
The night was full of mortal voices, the sounds of running feet. A great noisy engine had come to a halt on the distant corner. I had to force these miserable mortal limbs to move.
I motioned for Mojo to follow, and off we crept past the ruins of the little house, still burning merrily, and over a low garden wall and through an overgrown alley and away.
Only later did I think how close we had probably come to capture—the mortal arsonist and his menacing dog.
But how could such a thing matter? Louis had cast me out, and so had Marius—Marius, who might find my preternatural body before I did, and destroy it on the spot. Marius, who might already have destroyed it so that I was left forever within this mortal frame.
Oh, if ever I’d known such misery in my mortal youth, I didn’t remember it. And if I had, it would have been little consolation to me now. As for my fear, it was unspeakable! Reason couldn’t compass it. Round and round I went with my hopes and feeble plans.
“I have to find the Body Thief, I have to find him and you must give me time, Marius, if you will not help me, you must grant me that much.”
Over and over I said it like the Hail Mary of a rosary as I trudged on through the bitter rain.
Once or twice I even shouted my prayers in the darkness, standing beneath a high dripping oak tree, and trying to see the approaching light coming down through the wet sky.
Who in all the world would help me?
David was my only hope, though what he could do to help me, I couldn’t even imagine. David! And what if he, too, turned his back on me?
NINETEEN
I was sitting in the Café du Monde as the sun came up, thinking, how shall I get into my rooftop rooms? This little problem was preventing me from losing my mind. Was that the key to mortal survival? Hmmm. How to breach my luxurious little apartment? I myself had fitted the entry to the roof garden with an impassable iron gate. I myself secured the doors of the penthouse itself with numerous and complex locks. Indeed, the windows were barred against intruding mortals, though how they could have possibly reached the windows, I never truly considered before.
Ah, well, I shall have to get through the gate. I shall work some verbal magic on the other tenants of the building—all tenants of the blond Frenchman Lestat de Lioncourt, who treats them very well, I might add. I shall convince them I am a French cousin of the landlord, sent to take care of the penthouse in his absence, and that I must be allowed in at all costs. Never mind that I must use a crowbar! Or an ax! Or a buzz saw. Only a technicality, as they say in this age. I must get in.
And then what will I do? Pick up a kitchen knife—for the place has such things, though God knows I never had need of a kitchen—and slit my mortal throat?
No. Call David. There is no one else in this world to whom you can turn, and oh, think of the dreadful things David is going to say!
When I ceased to think of all this, I fell immediately into the crushing despair.
They had cast me out. Marius. Louis. In my worst folly, they had refused me help. Oh, I had mocked Marius, true. I had refused his wisdom, his company, his rules.
Oh, yes, I had asked for it, as mortals so often declare. And I had done this despicable thing of letting loose the Body Thief with my powers. True. Guilty again of spectacular blunders and experiments. But had I ever dreamed of what it would truly mean to be stripped utterly of my powers and on the outside looking in? The others knew; they must know. And they had let Marius come to render the judgment, to let me know that for what I had done, I was cast out!
But Louis, my beautiful Louis, how could he have spurned me! I would have defied heaven to help Louis! I had so counted upon Louis, I had so counted upon waking this night with the old blood running powerful and true in my veins.
Oh, Lord God—I was no longer one of them. I was not anything but this mortal man, sitting here in the smothering warmth of the café, drinking this coffee—ah, yes, nice-tasting coffee, of course—and munching on the sugar doughnuts with no hope of ever regaining his glorious place in the dark Elohim.
Ah, how I hated them. How I wished to harm them! But who was to blame for all this? Lestat—now six feet two inches tall, with brown eyes and rather dark skin and a nice mop of wavy brown hair; Lestat, with muscular arms and strong legs, and another severe mortal chill sickening and weakening him; Lestat, with his faithful dog, Mojo—Lestat pondering how in the world he would catch the demon who had run off, not with his soul as so often happens, but with his body, a body which might have already been—don’t think of it—destroyed!
Reason told me it was a little too early to plot anything. Besides, I have never had a deep interest in revenge. Revenge is the concern of those who are at some point or other beaten. I am not beaten, I told myself. No, not beaten. And victory is far more interesting to contemplate than revenge.
Ah, best to think of little things, things which can be changed. David had to listen to me. He had at least to give me his advice! But what else could he give? How could two mortal men go after that despicable creature. Ahhh …
And Mojo was hungry. He was looking up at me with his large clever brown eyes. How people in the café stared at him; what a wide berth they gave him, this ominous furry creature with his dark muzzle, tender pink-lined ears, and enormous paws. Really ought to feed Mojo. After all, the old cliché was true. This great hunk of dog flesh was my only friend!
Did Satan have a dog when they hurled him down into hell? Well, the dog would probably have gone with him, that much I knew.
“How do I do it, Mojo?” I asked. “How does a mere mortal catch the Vampire Lestat? Or have the old ones burnt my beautiful body to ashes? Was that the meaning of Marius’s visit, to let me know it was done? Oooooh, God. What does the witch say in that ghastly film? How could you do this to my beautiful wickedness. Aaah, I have a fever again, Mojo. Things are going to take care of themselves. I’M GOING TO DIE!”
But Lord in heaven, behold the sun crashing down silently on the dirty pavements, look at my shabby and charming New Orleans waking to the beauteous Caribbean light.
“Let’s go, Mojo. Time to break and enter. And then we can be warm and we can rest.”
Stopping by the restaurant opposite the old French Market, I bought a mess of bones and meat for him. Surely it would do. Indeed, the kindly little waitress filled a sack with scraps from last night’s garbage, with the lusty little affirmation that the dog was going to like that a lot! What about me? Didn’t I want some breakfast? Wasn’t I hungry on a beautiful winter morning like this?
“Later, darling.” I placed a large bill in her hand. I was still rich, that was one consolation. Or at least I thought I was. I wouldn’t know for certain until I reached my computer, and tracked the activities of the loathsome swindler for myself.
Mojo consumed his meal in the gutter without a single solitary complaint. That’s a dog for you. Why wasn’t I born a dog?
Now, where the hell was my penthouse apartment! I had to stop and to think, and then to wander two blocks out of my way, and back again before I found it, getting colder by the minute, though the sky was blue and the sun very bright now, for I almost never entered the building from the street.
Getting into the building was very easy. Indeed the door on Dumaine Street was very simple to force and then slam shut. Ah, but that gate, that will be the worst part, I thought, as I dragged my heavy legs up the stairs, one flight after another, Mojo waiting kindly at the landings for me to catch up.
At last I saw the bars of the gate, and the lovely sunlight streaming
into the stairwell from the roof garden, and the flutter of the large green elephant ears, which were only a little bruised at the edges from the cold.
But this lock, how would I ever break this lock? I was in the process of estimating what tools I would need—how about a small bomb?—when I realized that I was looking at the door to my apartment some fifty feet away, and that it was not closed.
“Ah, God, the wretch has been here!” I whispered. “Damn him, Mojo, he’s sacked my lair.”
Of course that might be construed as a hopeful sign. The wretch still lived; the others hadn’t done away with him. And I could still catch him! But how. I kicked the gate, sending a riot of pain through my foot and leg.
Then I grabbed hold of it and rattled it mercilessly but it was as secure in its old iron hinges as I had designed it to be! A weak revenant such as Louis couldn’t have broken it, let alone a mortal man. Undoubtedly the fiend had never even touched it but made his entry as I did, out of the skies.
All right, stop this. Obtain some tools and do it quickly, and discover the extent of the damage which the fiend has done.
I turned to go, but just as I did so, Mojo stood at attention and gave his warning growl. Someone was moving inside the apartment. I saw a bit of shadow dance on the foyer wall.
Not the Body Thief, that was impossible, thank God. But who?
In an instant the question was answered. David appeared! My beautiful David, dressed in a dark tweed suit and overcoat and peering at me with his characteristic expression of curiosity and alertness over the length of the garden path. I don’t think I have ever been so glad to see another mortal being in all my long accursed life.
I called his name at once. And then in French declared that it was I, Lestat. Please open the gate.
He did not immediately respond. Indeed, never had he seemed so dignified, self-possessed and so truly the elegant British gentleman as he stood there, staring at me, his narrow heavily lined face registering nothing but mute shock. He stared at the dog. Then he stared at me again. And then once more at the dog.