by Rice, Anne
“Not so fast,” he said. “The Stalker. You said you saw something. What did you see?”
I fell silent. I had dreaded this moment. I had not tried to describe these experiences even to myself. But I had to continue. I had called David here for help. I had to explain.
“We were outside, out there on Fifth Avenue; he—the Victim—was traveling in a car, uptown, and I knew the general direction, the secret flat where he keeps his treasures.
“I was merely walking, human style. I stopped at a hotel. I went inside to see the flowers. You know, in these hotels you can always find flowers. When you think you’re losing your mind on account of winter, you can go into these hotels and find lavish bouquets of the most overwhelming lilies.”
“Yes,” he said with a little soft, halfhearted sigh. “I know.”
“I was in the lobby. I was looking at this huge bouquet. I wanted to … to, ah … leave some sort of offering, as if it were a church … to those who’d made this bouquet, something like that, and I was thinking to myself, Maybe I should kill the Victim, and then … I swear this is the way it was, David—
“—the ground was gone. The hotel was gone. I wasn’t anywhere or anchored to anything, and yet I was surrounded by people, people howling and chattering and screaming and crying, and laughing, yes, actually laughing, and all this was happening simultaneously, and the light, David, the light was blinding. This wasn’t darkness, this wasn’t the clichéd flames of the inferno, and I reached out. I didn’t do this with my arms. I couldn’t find my arms. I reached out with everything, every limb, every fiber, just trying to touch something, to regain equilibrium, and then I realized I was standing on terra firma, and this Being was in front of me, its shadow was falling over me. Look, I don’t have any words for this. It was horrific. It was very certainly the worst thing I’ve ever seen! The light was shining behind it, and it stood between me and this light and it had a face, and the face was dark, extremely dark, and as I looked at it I lost all control. I must have roared. Yet I have no idea if in the real world I made a sound.
“When I came to my senses, I was still there, in the lobby. Everything looked ordinary, and it was as if I’d been in that other place for years and years, and all sorts of fragments of memory were slipping away from me, flying away from me, so fast that I couldn’t catch any one thought or finished proposition or suggestion.
“All I could remember with any certainty is what I just told you. I stood there. I looked at the flowers. Nobody in the lobby noticed me. I pretended everything was normal. But I kept trying to remember, kept chasing these fragments, beset by bits and pieces of talk, or threat or description, and I kept seeing very clearly this truly ugly dark Being before me, exactly the sort of demon you’d create if you wanted to drive someone right out of his reason. I kept seeing this face and.…”
“Yes?”
“… I’ve seen him twice again.”
I realized I was mopping my forehead with the little napkin the waiter had given me. He’d come again. David placed an order. Then he leant close to me.
“You think you’ve seen the Devil.”
“There’s not much else that could frighten me, David,” I said. “We both know that. There isn’t a vampire in existence who could really frighten me. Not the very oldest, not the wisest, not the cruelest. Not even Maharet. And what do I know of the supernatural other than us? The elementals, the poltergeists, the little addlebrained spirits, we all know and see … the things you called up with Candomble witchcraft.”
“Yes,” he said.
“This was The Man Himself, David.”
He smiled, but it was by no means unkind or unsympathetic. “For you, Lestat,” he teased softly, seductively, “for you, it would have to be the Devil Himself.”
We both laughed. Though I think it was what writers call a mirthless laugh. I went on.
“The second time it was in New Orleans. I was near home, our flat in the Rue Royale. Just walking. And I started to hear those steps behind me, like something deliberately following me and letting me know it. Damn it, I’ve done this to mortals myself and it’s so vicious. God! Why was I ever created! And then the third time, the Thing was even closer. Same scenario. Huge, towering over me. Wings, David. Either it has wings or I in my fear am endowing it with wings. It is a Winged Being, and it is hideous, and this last time, I kept hold of the image long enough to run from it, to flee, David, like a coward. And then I woke up, as I always do, in some familiar place, where I started actually, and everything’s just the way it was. Nobody has a hair out of place.”
“And it doesn’t talk to you when it appears like this?”
“No, not at all. It’s trying to drive me crazy. It’s trying to … to make me do something, perhaps. Remember what you said, David, that you didn’t know why God and the Devil had let you see them.”
“Hasn’t it occurred to you that it is connected with this victim you’re tracking? That perhaps something or someone does not want you to kill this man?”
“That’s absurd, David. Think of the suffering in the world tonight. Think of those dying in Eastern Europe, think of the wars in the Holy Land, think of what’s happening in this very city. You think God or the Devil gives a damn about one man? And our kind, our kind preying for centuries on the weak and the attractive and the unlucky. When has the Devil ever interfered with Louis, or Armand, or Marius, or any of us? Oh, would that it were so easy to summon his august presence and know once and for all!”
“Do you want to know?” he asked earnestly.
I waited, thought about it. Shook my head. “Could be something explainable. I detest being afraid of it! Maybe this is madness. Maybe that’s what Hell is. You go mad. And all your demons come and get you just as fast as you can think them up.”
“Lestat, it is evil, you are saying that?”
I started to answer and then stopped. Evil.
“You said it was hideous; you described intolerable noise, and a light. Was it evil? Did you feel evil?”
“Well, actually, no. I didn’t. I felt the same thing I feel when I hear those bits of conversation, some sort of sincerity, I suppose is the word for it, sincerity and purpose, and I’ll tell you something, David, about this Being, this Being who’s stalking me—he has a sleepless mind in his heart and an insatiable personality.”
“What?”
“A sleepless mind in his heart,” I insisted, “and an insatiable personality,” I had blurted out. But I knew it was a quote. I was quoting it from something, but what I had no idea, some bit of poetry?
“What do you mean?” he asked patiently.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know why I said it. I don’t even know why those words came into my mind. But it’s true. He does have a sleepless mind in His heart, and He has an insatiable personality. He’s not mortal. He’s not human!”
“ ‘A sleepless mind in his heart,’ ” David quoted the words. “ ‘Insatiable personality.’ ”
“Yes. That’s The Man, all right, the Being, the male Thing. No, wait, stop, I don’t know if it’s male; I mean … why, I don’t know what gender it is … it’s not distinctly female, let’s put it that way, and not being distinctly female, it seems therefore … to be male.”
“I understand.”
“You think I’ve gone mad, don’t you? You hope so, don’t you?”
“Of course I don’t.”
“You ought to,” I said. “Because if this being doesn’t exist inside my head, if he exists outside, then he can get you too.”
This made him very obviously thoughtful and distant and then he said strange words to me I didn’t expect.
“But he doesn’t want me, does he? And he doesn’t want the others, either. He wants you.”
I was crestfallen. I am proud, I am an egomaniac of a being; I do love attention; I want glory; I want to be wanted by God and the Devil. I want, I want, I want, I want.
“I’m not upbraiding you,” he said. “I’m merely suggestin
g that this thing has not threatened the others. That in all of these hundreds of years, none of the others … none that we know has ever spoken of such a thing. Indeed, in your writing, in your books, you’ve been most explicit that no vampire had ever seen the Devil, have you not?”
I admitted it with a shrug. Louis, my beloved pupil and fledgling, had once crossed the world to find the “eldest” of the vampires, and Armand had stepped forward with open arms to tell him that there was no God or Devil. And I, half a century before that, had made my own journey for the “eldest” and it had been Marius, made in the days of Rome, who had said the very same thing to me. No God. No Devil.
I sat still, conscious of stupid discomforts, that the place was stuffy, that the perfume was not really perfume, that there were no lilies in these rooms, that it was going to be very cold outside, and I couldn’t think of rest until dawn forced me to it, and the night was long, and I was not making sense to David, and I might lose him … and that Thing might come, that Thing might come again.
“Will you stay near me?” I hated my own words.
“I’ll stand at your side, and I’ll try to hold on to you if it tries to take you.”
“You will?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Why?”
“Don’t be foolish,” he said. “Look, I don’t know what I saw in the café. Never again in my life did I ever see anything like that or hear it. You know, I told you my story once. I went to Brazil, I learned the Candomble secrets. The night you … you came after me, I tried to summon the spirits.”
“They came. They were too weak to help.”
“Right. But … what is my point? My point is simply that I love you, that we’re linked in some way that none of the others is linked. Louis worships you. You’re some sort of dark god to him, though he pretends to hate you for having made him. Armand envies you and spies on you far more than you might think.”
“I hear Armand and I see him and I ignore him,” I said.
“Marius, he hasn’t forgiven you for not becoming his pupil, I think you know that, for not becoming his acolyte, for not believing in history as some sort of redemptive coherence.”
“Well put. That is what he believes. Oh, but he’s angry with me for much greater things than that, you weren’t one of us when I woke the Mother and the Father. You weren’t there. But that’s another tale.”
“I know all of it. You forget your books. I read your work as soon as you write it, as soon as you let it loose into the mortal world.”
I laughed bitterly. “Maybe the Devil’s read my books too,” I said. Again, I loathed being afraid. It made me furious.
“But the point is,” he said, “I’ll stand with you.” He looked down at the table, drifting, the way he so often had when he was mortal, when I could read his mind yet he could defeat me, consciously locking me out. Now it was simply a barrier. I would never again know what his thoughts felt like.
“I’m hungry,” I whispered.
“Hunt.”
I shook my head. “When I’m ready, I’ll take the Victim. As soon as Dora leaves New York. Soon as she goes back to her old convent. She knows the bastard’s doomed. That’s what she will think after I’ve done it, that one of his many enemies got him, that his evil came back on him, very Biblical, when all the time it was just a species of killer roaming the Savage Garden of the Earth, a vampire, looking for a juicy mortal, and her father had caught my eye, and it’s going to be over, just like that.”
“Are you planning to torture this man?”
“David. You shock me. What an impolite question.”
“Will you?” he asked more timidly, more imploringly.
“I don’t think so. I just want to.…” I smiled. He knew now well enough. Nobody had to tell him anymore about drinking the blood, the soul, the memory, the spirit, the heart. I wouldn’t know that wretched mortal creature until I took him, held him against my chest, opened up the only honest vein in his body, so to speak. Ah, too many thoughts, too many memories, too much anger.
“I’m going to stay with you,” he said. “Do you have rooms here?”
“Nothing proper. Find something for us. Find it close to … close to the cathedral.”
“Why?”
“Well, David, you should know why. If the Devil starts chasing me down Fifth Avenue, I’ll just run into St. Patrick’s and run to the High Altar and fall on my knees before the Blessed Sacrament and beg God to forgive me, not to sink me into the river of fire up to my eyes.”
“You are on the verge of being truly mad.”
“No, not at all. Look at me. I can tie my shoelaces. See? And my tie. Takes some care, you know, to get it all around your neck and into your shirt and so forth, and not look like a lunatic with a big scarf around your neck. I’m together, as mortals so bluntly state it. Can you find us some rooms?”
He nodded.
“There’s a glass tower, right over there somewhere, beside the cathedral. Monstrous building.”
“The Olympic Tower.”
“Yes, could you get us some rooms there? Actually I have mortal agents who can do this sort of thing, I don’t know why in the world I’m whining like a fool in this place, asking you to take care of humiliating particulars.…”
“I’ll take care of it. It’s probably too late tonight, but I can swing it tomorrow evening. It will be under the name David Talbot.”
“My clothes. There’s a stash of them here under the name Isaac Rummel. Just a suitcase or two, and some coats. It’s really winter, isn’t it?” I gave him the key to the room. This was humiliating. Rather like making a servant of him. Perhaps he’d change his mind and put our new lodgings under the name of Renfield.
“I’ll take care of it all. We’ll have a palatial base of operations by tomorrow. I’ll see that keys are left for you at the desk. But what are you going to be doing?”
I waited, I was listening for the Victim. Still talking to Dora. Dora was leaving in the morning.
I pointed upwards. “Killing that bastard. I think I’ll do it tomorrow right after sunset if I can zone in on him quickly enough. Dora will be gone. Oh, I am so hungry. I wish she’d take a midnight plane out of here. Dora, Dora.”
“You really like this little girl, don’t you?”
“Yes. Find her on television sometime, you’ll see. Her talent’s rather spectacular, and her teaching has that dangerous emotional grip to it.”
“Is she really gifted?”
“With everything. Very white skin, short black hair, bobbed, long thin yet shapely legs, and she dances with such abandon, arms flung out, rather makes one think of a whirling dervish or the Sufis in their perfection, and when she speaks it’s not humble precisely, it’s full of wonder and all very, very benign.”
“I should think so.”
“Well, religion isn’t always, you know. I mean she doesn’t rant about the coming Apocalypse or the Devil corning to get you if you don’t send her a check.”
He reflected for a moment, then said meaningfully, “I see how it is.”
“No, you don’t. I love her, yes, but I’ll soon forget her completely. It’s just that … well, there’s a convincing version of something there, and delicacy, and she really believes in it; she thinks Jesus walked on this earth. She thinks it happened.”
“And this thing that’s following you, it’s not connected in any way with this choice of victim, her father?”
“Well, there is a way to find out,” I said.
“How?”
“Kill the son of a bitch tonight. Maybe I’ll do it after he leaves her. My Victim won’t stay here with her. He’s too scared of bringing danger to her. He never stays in the same hotel with her. He has three different apartments here. I’m surprised he’s stayed this long.”
“I’m staying with you.”
“No, go on, I have to finish this one. I need you, I really need you. I needed to tell you, and to have you with me, the age-old venerable human needs, but I don
’t need you at my side. I know you’re thirsting. I don’t have to read your mind to feel that much. You starved as you came here, so that you wouldn’t disappoint me. Go prowl the city.” I smiled. “You’ve never hunted New York, have you?”
He shook his head in the negative gesture. His eyes were changing. It was the hunger. It was giving him that dull look, like a dog who had caught the scent of the bitch in heat. We all get that look, the bestial look, but we are nothing as good as bestial, are we? Any of us.
I stood up. “The rooms in the Olympic Tower,” I said. “You’ll get them so that they look down on St. Patrick’s, won’t you? Not too high up, low if you can do it, so that the steeples are close.”
“You are out of your brilliant preternatural mind.”
“No. But I’m going out into the snow now. I hear him up there. He’s planning to leave her, he’s kissing her, chaste and loving kisses. His car is prowling around out front. He’ll go way uptown to that secret place of his where the relics are kept. He thinks his enemies in crime and government know nothing of it, or believe it’s just the junk shop of a friend. But I know of it. And what all those treasures mean to him. If he goes up there, I’ll follow.… No more time, David.”
“I’ve never been so completely confused,” he said. “I wanted to say God go with you.”
I laughed. I leant to give him a quick kiss on the forehead, so swift others would not make anything of it if they saw it, and then swallowing the fear, the instantaneous fear, I left him.
In the rooms high above, Dora cried. She sat by the window watching the snow and crying. She regretted refusing his new present for her. If only.… She pushed her forehead against the cold glass and prayed for her father.
I crossed the street. The snow felt rather good, but then I’m a monster.
I stood at the back of St. Patrick’s, watching as my handsome Victim came out, hurriedly through the snow, shoulders hunched, and plunged into the backseat of his expensive black car. I heard him give the address very near to that junk-shop flat where he kept his treasures. All right, he’d be alone up there for a while. Why not do it, Lestat?