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

by Rice, Anne

  I began to sing “Dies irae, dies illa“ and to laugh as I sang it.

  Three nights later, screaming and cursing, I tore the reeking corpse of Riccardo limb from limb so I could hurl the pieces out of the cell. I could not endure it! I flung the bloated trunk at the bars again and again and fell down, sobbing, unable to drive my fist or foot into it to break its bulk. I crawled into the farthest corner to get away from it.

  Allesandra came. “Child, what can I say to comfort you?” A bodiless whisper in the darkness.

  But there was another figure there, Santino. Turning I saw by some errant light which only a vampire’s eyes could gather that he put his finger to his lip and he shook his head, gently correcting her. “He must be alone now,” Santino said.

  “Blood!” I screamed. I flew at the bars, my arm stretched out so that both were affrighted and rushed away from me.

  At the end of seven more nights, when I was starved to the point where even the scent of the blood didn’t rouse me, they laid the victim—a small boy child of the streets crying for pity—directly in my arms.

  “Oh, don’t be afraid, don’t,” I whispered, sinking my teeth quickly into his neck. “Hmmmmm, trust in me,” I whispered, savoring the blood, drinking it slowly, trying not to laugh with delight, my blood tears of relief falling down on his little face. “Oh, dream, dream sweet and pretty things. There are saints who will come; do you see them?”

  Afterwards I lay back, satiated, and picking from the muddy ceiling over my head those infinitesimal stars of hard bright stone or flinty iron that lay embedded in the earth. I let my head roll to the side, away from the corpse of the poor child which I had arranged carefully, as for the shroud, against the wall behind me.

  I saw a figure in my cell, a small figure. I saw its gauzy outline against the wall as it stood gazing at me. Another child? I rose up, aghast. No scent came from it. I turned and stared at the corpse. It lay as before. Yet there, against the far wall, was the very boy himself, small and wan and lost, looking at me.

  “How is this?” I whispered.

  But the wretched little thing couldn’t speak. It could only stare. It was clothed in the very same white shift that its corpse wore, and its eyes were large and colorless and soft with musing.

  A distant sound came into my hearing. It was of a shuffling step in the long catacomb that led to my little prison. This was no vampire’s step. I drew up, my nostrils flaring ever so slightly as I tried to catch the scent of this being. Nothing changed in the damp musty air. Only the scent of death was the aroma of my cell, of the poor broken little body.

  I fixed my eyes on the tenacious little spirit.

  “Why do you linger here?” I asked it desperately in a whisper. “Why can I see you?”

  It moved its little mouth as if it meant to speak, but it only shook its head ever so slightly, piteously eloquent of its confusion.

  The steps came on. And once again I struggled to catch the scent. But there was nothing, not even the dusty reek of a vampire’s robes, only this, the approach of this shuffling sound. And finally there came to the bars the tall shadowy figure of a haggard woman.

  I knew that she was dead. I knew. I knew she was as dead as the little one who hovered by the wall.

  “Speak to me, please, oh, please, I beg you, I pray you, speak to me!” I cried out.

  But neither phantom could look away from the other. The child with a quick soft tread hurried into the woman’s arms, and she, turning, with her babe restored, began to fade even as her feet once again made the dry scraping sound on the hard mud floor which had first announced her.

  “Look at me!” I begged in a low voice. “Just one glance.”

  She paused. There was almost nothing left of her. But she turned her head and the dim light of her eye fixed on me. Then soundlessly, totally, she vanished.

  I lay back, and flung out my arm in careless despair and felt the child’s corpse, still faintly warm beside me.

  I did not always see their ghosts.

  I did not seek to master the means of doing so.

  They were no friends to me—it was a new curse—these spirits that would now and then collect about the scene of my bloody destruction. I saw no hope in their faces when they did pass through those moments of my wretchedness when the blood was warmest in me. No bright light of hope surrounded them. Was it starvation that had brought about this power?

  I told no one about them. In that damned cell, that cursed place where my soul was broken week after week without so much as the comfort of an enclosing coffin, I feared them and then grew to hate them.

  Only the great future would reveal to me that other vampires, in the main, never see them. Was it a mercy? I didn’t know. But I get ahead of myself.

  Let me return to that intolerable time, that crucible.

  Some twenty weeks were passed in this misery.

  I didn’t even believe anymore that the bright and fantastical world of Venice had ever existed. And I knew my Master was dead. I knew it. I knew that all I loved was dead.

  I was dead. Sometimes I dreamt I was home in Kiev in the Monastery of the Caves, a saint. Then I awoke to anguish.

  When Santino and the gray-haired Allesandra came to me, they were gentle as ever, and Santino shed tears to see me as I was, and said:

  “Come to me, come now, come study with me in earnest, come. Not even those as wretched as we should suffer as you suffer. Come to me.”

  I entrusted myself to his arms, I opened my lips to his, I bowed my head to press my face to his chest, and as I listened to his beating heart, I breathed deep, as if the very air had been denied me until that moment.

  Allesandra laid her cool, soft hands so gently on me.

  “Poor orphan child,” she said. “Wandering child, oh, such a long road you’ve traveled to come to us.”

  And what a wonder it was that all they had done to me should seem but a thing we shared, a common and inevitable catastrophe.

  Santino’s cell.

  I lay on the floor in the arms of Allesandra, who rocked me and stroked my hair.

  “I want you to hunt with us tonight,” said Santino. “You come with us, with Allesandra and with me. We won’t let the others torment you. You are hungry. You are so very hungry, are you not?”

  And so my tenure with the Children of Darkness began.

  Night after night I did hunt in silence with my new companions, my new loved ones, my new Master and my new Mistress, and then I was ready to begin my new apprenticeship in earnest, and Santino, my teacher, with Allesandra to help him now and then, made me his own pupil, a great honor in the coven, or so the others were quick to tell me when they had the chance.

  I learnt what Lestat has already written from what I revealed to him, the great laws.

  One, that we were formed in Covens throughout the world, and each Coven would have its leader, and I was destined to be such a one, like unto the Superior of a convent, and that all matters of authority would be in my hands. I and I alone should determine when a new vampire should be made to join us; I and I alone would see to it that the transformation was made in the proper way.

  Two, the Dark Gift, for that is what we called it, must never be given to those who were not beautiful, for the enslaving of the beautiful with the Dark Blood was more pleasing to a Just God.

  Three, that never should an ancient vampire make the new fledgling, for our powers increase with time and the power of the old ones is too great for the young. Witness the tragedy of myself, made by the last of the known Children of the Millennia, the great and terrible Marius. I had the strength of a demon in the body of a child.

  Four, that no one among us can destroy another among us, save the coven leader, who must at any time be prepared to destroy the disobedient of his flock. That all vagabond vampires, belonging to no coven, must be destroyed by that leader on sight.

  Five, no vampire must ever reveal his identity or his magical strengths to a mortal and thereafter be let to live. No vam
pire must ever write any words that reveal these secrets. Indeed no vampire’s name was ever to be known in the mortal world, and any evidence of our existence which ever escaped into that realm must at all costs be eradicated, along with those who allowed such a terrible violation of God’s will.

  There were other things. There were rituals, there were incantations, there was a folklore of sorts.

  “We do not enter churches, for God should strike us dead if we do,” declared Santino. “We do not look upon the crucifix, and its mere presence on a chain about the neck of a victim is sufficient to save that mortal’s life. We turn our eyes and fingers from the medals of the Virgin. We cower before the images of the saints.

  “But we strike with a holy fire those who go unprotected. We feast when and where we will and with cruelty, and upon the innocent and upon those most blessed with beauty and riches. But we make no boast to the world of what we do, nor boast to one another.

  “The great castles and courtrooms of the world are shut to us, for we must never, never, meddle in the destiny which Christ Our Lord had ordained for those made in His Image, any more than do the vermin, or the blazing fire, or the Black Death.

  “We are a curse of the shadows; we are a secret. We are eternal.

  “And when our work is done for Him, we gather without the comfort of riches or luxuries, in those places blessed by us underground for our slumber, and there with only fire and candles for light, we come together to say the prayers and sing the songs and dance, yes, dance about the fire, thereby to strengthen our will, thereby to share with our sisters and brothers our strength.”

  Six long months passed during which I studied these things, during which I ventured forth into the back alleys of Rome to hunt with the others, to gorge myself upon the abandoned of fate who fell so easily into my hands.

  No more did I search the mind for a crime that justified my predatory feasting. No more did I practice the fine art of drinking without pain to the victim, no more did I shield the wretched mortal from the horror of my face, my desperate hands, my fangs.

  One night, I awoke to find myself surrounded by my brothers. The gray-haired woman helped me from my coffin of lead and told me that I should come with them.

  Out under the stars we went together. The bonfire had been built high, as it had been on the night my mortal brothers had died.

  The air was cool and full of the scent of spring flowers. I could hear the nightingale singing. And far off the whisperings and murmurings of the great crowded city of Rome. I turned my eyes towards the city. I saw her seven hills covered over with soft flickering lights. I saw the clouds above, tinged with gold, as they bore down on these scattered and beautiful beacons, as if the darkness of the sky were full with child.

  I saw the circle had formed around the fire. Two and three deep were the Children of Darkness. Santino, in a costly new robe of black velvet, ah, such a violation of our strict rubrics, came forward to kiss me on either cheek.

  “We are sending you far away, to the north of Europe,” he said, “to the city of Paris, where the Coven leader has gone, as we all go sooner or later, into the fire. His children wait for you. They have heard tales of you, of your gentleness and your piety and your beauty. You will be their leader and their saint.”

  My brothers one by one came to kiss me. My sisters, who were few in number, planted their kisses on my cheeks as well.

  I said nothing. I stood quiet, listening still for the song of the birds in the nearby pines, my eyes drifting now and then to the lowering Heavens and wondering if the rain would come, the rain which I could smell, so clean and pure, the only cleansing water allowed to me now, the sweet Roman rain, gentle and warm.

  “Do you take the solemn vow to lead the Coven in the Ways of Darkness as Satan would have it and his Lord and Creator, God, would have it?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you vow to obey all orders sent to you from the Roman Coven?”

  “I do …”

  Words and words and words.

  Wood was heaped on the fire. The drums had begun. The solemn tones.

  I began to cry.

  Then came the soft arms of Allesandra, the soft mass of her gray hair against my neck.

  “I will go with you north, my child,” she said.

  I was overwhelmed with gratitude. I threw my arms around her, I held her hard cold body close to me, and I shook with sobs.

  “Yes, dear, dear little one,” she said. “I will stay with you. I am old and I will stay with you until it is time for me to go to God’s Justice, as we all must.”

  “Then we dance in jubilation!” cried Santino. “Satan and Christ, brothers in the House of the Lord, we give you this perfected soul!”

  He threw up his arms.

  Allesandra stepped back from me, her eyes bright with tears. I could think of nothing but only my gratitude that she would be with me, that I would not make this awful terrible journey alone. With me, Allesandra, with me. Oh, Fool for Satan and the God Who made him!

  She stood beside Santino, tall as he was, majestic as she too threw up her arms and swung her hair from side to side.

  “Let the dancing begin!” she cried.

  The drums became a thunder, the horns wailed, and the thump of the tambourines filled my ears.

  A long low cry rose from the huge thick circle of vampires, and all at once, locking hands, they began to dance.

  I was pulled back into the chain they made about the raging bonfire. I was jerked from left to right as the figures turned this way, then that, then broke free and leapt spinning into the air.

  I felt the wind on the back of my neck as I turned, as I leapt. I reached out with perfect accuracy to receive the hands on either side of me, then to sway to the right and to the left again.

  Above, the silent clouds thickened, curled and sailed across the darkling sky. The rain came, its soft roar lost in the cries of the mad dancing figures, in the crackle of fire and the torrent of drums.

  I heard it. I turned and leapt high into the air and received it, the silvery rain floating down to me like the blessing of the dark Heavens, the baptismal waters of the damned.

  The music surged. A barbarous rhythm broke loose everywhere, the orderly chain of dancers forgotten. In rain and in the unquenchable blaze of the giant fire, the vampires threw out their arms, howling, writhing, their limbs constricting so that they stomped with backs bent, heels pounded into the earth, and then sprang free, arms outstretched, mouths open, hips churning as they whirled and leapt, and caught in raucous open-throated volume the hymn came again, Dies irae, dies illa. Oh, yes, oh, yes, day of woe, oh, day of fire!

  Afterwards, when the rain came down solemnly and steadily, when the bonfire was no more but a black wreckage, when they all had gone off to hunt, when only a few milled the dark ground of the Sabbat, chanting their prayers in anguished delirium, I lay still, the rain washing me, as I put my face against the ground.

  It seemed the monks were there from the old Monastery in Kiev. They laughed at me, but gently. They said, “Andrei, what made you think you could escape? Didn’t you know that God had called you?”

  “Get away from me, you are not here, and I am nowhere; I am lost in the dark wastes of a winter without end.”

  I tried to picture Him, His Holy Face. But there was only Allesandra, come to help me to my feet. Allesandra, who promised to tell me of dark times, long before Santino was made, when she had been given the Dark Gift in the forests of France to which we now would be going together.

  “Oh Lord, Lord hear my prayer,” I whispered. If I could but see the Holy Face.

  But we were forbidden such things. We could never, never look upon His Image! Until the end of the world, we would work without that comfort. Hell is the absence of God.

  What can I say in defense of myself now?

  What can I say?

  Others have told the tale, how for centuries I was the stalwart leader of the Paris Coven, how I lived out those years in ignor
ance and shadow, obeying old laws until there was no more any Santino or Roman Coven to send them to me, how in rags and quiet despair, I clung to the Old Faith and the Old Ways as others went into the fire to destroy themselves, or simply wandered away.

  What can I say in defense of the convert and the saint that I became?

  For three hundred years I was the vagabond angel child of Satan, I was his baby-faced killer, his lieutenant, his fool. Allesandra was always with me. When others perished or deserted, there was Allesandra who kept the faith. But it was my sin, it was my journey, it was my terrible folly, and I alone must carry the burden of it for as long as I exist.

  That last morning in Rome, before I was to leave for the north, it was decided that my name must be changed.

  Amadeo, containing the very word for God, was most unseemly for a Child of Darkness, especially one meant to lead the Paris Coven.

  From various choices given me, Allesandra chose the name Armand.

  So I became Armand.

  PART II

  The BRIDGE of SIGHS

  16

  I refuse to discuss the past another moment. I don’t like it. I don’t care about it. How can I tell you about something that doesn’t interest me? Is it supposed to interest you?

  The problem is that too much has been written about my past already. But what if you haven’t read those books? What if you haven’t wallowed in The Vampire Lestat’s florid descriptions of me and my alleged delusions and errors?

  All right, all right. A little bit more, but only to bring me to New York, to the moment when I saw Veronica’s Veil, so that you don’t have to go back and read his books, so that my book will be enough.

  All right. We must continue to cross this Bridge of Sighs.

  For three hundred years, I was faithful to the Old Ways of Santino, even after Santino himself had disappeared. Understand, this vampire was by no means dead. He turned up in the modern era, quite healthy, strong, silent and without apology for the credos he had stuffed down my throat in the year 1500 before I was sent north to Paris.