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

by Rice, Anne

  “And suppose such a being should overpower you before you have reached this place,” I said in a low voice, “how then should I establish any justice or revenge? No, you cannot take such a risk.”

  “But I will do it. Rely upon me.” Her eyes grew brighter and it seemed she looked about, as though absorbing the beauty of the walls. “How long have I kept your secret? I don’t know, only that nothing could pry it from me. And no matter what others suspected never did I betray you with one word.”

  “My precious, my darling,” I whispered. “You will not take such risks for me. Let me think now, let me use whatever powers of mind still remain to me. Let us sit here in quiet.”

  She seemed perturbed and then her face hardened.

  “Give me the Blood, my lord,” she said suddenly, her voice low and quick. “Give it to me. Make me what you made Amadeo. Make me a blood drinker, and then I will have the strength to bring the Evil Doer to you. You know it is the way.”

  I was completely caught off guard.

  I cannot say that in my burnt soul I had not thought of this very action—I had thought of it immediately when I had heard her weeping—but to hear it come from her own lips, and with such spirit, that was more than I had ever expected, and I knew as I had known from the beginning that it was the perfect plan.

  But I must think on this! Not only for her sake, but for my own. Once the magic had worked in her—assuming that I had the strength to give it—how then would we, two weak blood drinkers, hunt the city of Venice for the blood we needed and then make the long journey North?

  As a mortal she might have brought me to the Alpine pass of Those Who Must Be Kept by means of a wagon and armed guards, whom I might have left in the small hours to visit the chapel alone.

  As a blood drinker, she would have to sleep by day with me, and therefore we would both be at the mercy of those who transported the sarcophagi.

  In my pain, I could not imagine it.

  I could not take all the steps necessary. Indeed, it seemed suddenly that I could think of nothing, and shaking my head, I tried to prevent her from embracing me, from frightening herself all the more by embracing me and feeling the stiff dried creature that I had become.

  “Give me the Blood,” she said again with urgency. “You have the strength to do it, don’t you, my lord? And then I shall bring here all the victims you require! I saw the change in Amadeo afterwards. He didn’t have to show me. I will be that strong, will I not? Answer me, Marius. Or tell me, tell me how else I may cure you, or heal you, or bring you comfort in this suffering that I see.”

  I could say nothing. I was trembling with desire for her, with anger at her youth—at the conspiracy of her and Amadeo against me that he had told her—and consumed with desire for her here and now.

  Never had she seemed more alive, more purely human, more utterly natural in her rosy beauty—a thing not to be despoiled.

  She settled back as if she knew that she had pushed me a little too hard. Her voice came softer, yet still insistent.

  “Tell me again the story of your years,” she said, her eyes blazing. “Tell me again of how it was that Venice did not exist or Florence either when you were already Marius, tell me this story once more.”

  I went for her.

  She couldn’t have escaped.

  In fact I think that she tried to escape. Surely she screamed.

  No one outside heard her. I had her too quickly for that, and we were too deep in the golden room.

  Pushing the mask aside and covering her eyes with my left hand, I sank my teeth into her throat, and her blood came into me in a rush. Her heart pounded faster and faster. And just before it made to stop I drew back from her, shaking her violently and crying out against her ear:

  “Bianca, wake!”

  At once I slashed my tight dried wrist until I saw the seam of blood and this I forced across her open mouth against her tongue.

  I heard her hiss and then she clamped her mouth, only to moan hungrily. I drew back the burnt unyielding flesh and cut it open once again for her.

  Oh, it was not enough for her—I was too burnt, too weak—and all the while her blood went on a rampage through me, forcing its way into the collapsed and burnt cells that had once been alive.

  Again and again I cut my twisted bony wrist and forced it against her mouth, but it was useless.

  She was dying! And all the blood she’d given me had been devoured.

  Oh, this was monstrous. I couldn’t endure it—no, not to see the life of my Bianca snuffed out like one small candle. I should go screaming mad.

  At once I stumbled up the stone steps, not caring what my pain or weakness, forging my mind and heart together, and rising up, I opened the bronze door.

  Once at the head of the steps above the quais I called to her boatman:

  “Hurry,” and then went back inside that he should follow me, which he did.

  Not one second after he entered the house did I fall upon the poor unfortunate innocent and drink all the blood from him, and then, scarce able to breathe for the comfort and soothing pleasure it gave me, I made my way back to the golden room, to find her where I had left her, dying still, at the foot of the stairs.

  “Here now, Bianca, drink, for I have more blood to give,” I said against her ear, my cut wrist on her tongue once more. This time the blood flowed from it, scarce a deluge but what she must have and her mouth closed over the fount and she began to pull against my heart.

  “Yes, drink, my Bianca, my sweet Bianca,” I said, and she in her sighs answered me.

  The Blood had imprisoned her tender heart.

  The night’s dark journey had only begun. I could not send her in search of victims! The magic in her was scarce complete.

  Bent over like a hunchback in my weakness, I carried her out and into the gondola, each step achingly painful, my movements slow and unsure.

  And, once I had her seated against the cushions, half awake and answering me, her face never more beautiful, never more pale, I took up the solitary oar.

  Into the darker regions of Venice I traveled, the mist hanging thick over the canals, to those dimly lighted places where ruffians abound.

  “Wake, princess,” I said to her, “we are on the silent battlefield, and very soon will see our enemy, and the little war we love so much will begin.”

  In my pain I could scarcely stand upright, but as always happens in such situations, those we sought came out to do harm to us.

  Sensing in my posture and her beauty the very shape of weakness, they forfeited their strength at once.

  Into her arms, I easily enticed a proud and youthful victim, “who would pleasure the lady if that’s what we wished” and from this one she easily consumed a fatal draught, his dagger falling into the bottom of the boat.

  The next victim, a swaggering drunkard who hailed us down with promises of a nearby banquet to which we’d all be admitted, stepped fatally into my grasp.

  I had barely the strength for it, and once again the blood ran riot within me, healing me with such violent magic that it bordered upon an increasing pain.

  The third who came into our arms was a vagabond, whom I enticed with a coin I did not possess. Bianca took him, her words slurred, disappointed that he had been so frail.

  And all of this, beneath the veil of the ink-black night, and far away from the lights of the houses such as our own.

  On and on we went. The Mind Gift in me grew stronger with each kill. My pain was eased with each kill. My flesh was more fully restored with each kill.

  But it would take a wilderness of kills to restore me, an inconceivable wilderness of victims to bring back to me the vigor which I had possessed before.

  I knew that beneath my clothes, I appeared as one made of ropes dipped in pitch, and I could not imagine the dreadful terror that my face had become.

  Meantime, Bianca waked from her daze and suffered the pains of her mortal death, and now longed to return to her rooms for fresh clothing so that she
might return with me to the golden lined room, in garments fit for her to be my bride.

  She had had all too much of the blood of the victims and needed more of mine, but she did not know this, and I did not tell her as much.

  Only reluctantly did I concede to her request, taking her back to her palazzo, and waiting uneasily in the gondola until she came, marvelously dressed, to join me, her skin like her purest white pearls.

  Forsaking forever her many rooms, she brought with her many bundles, indeed all the clothes she wished to take with her, and all her jewels, and many candles, that we might be together in our hiding place without the roar of the torch.

  At last we were in the golden chamber by ourselves, and she was brimming with happiness as she gazed at me, her secretive and silent masked bridegroom.

  And only a single candle gave its slender light for us both.

  She had spread out a cloak of green velvet that we might sit on it, and so we did.

  My legs were crossed, and she leant back on her ankles. My pain was quiet in me yet terrible. Quiet in that it did not lurch with each breath I took but remained steady and allowed me to breathe as I would.

  Out of her many bundles she produced for me a polished mirror with a bone handle.

  “Here, take the mask off, if you wish,” she said, her oval eyes very brave and hard. “You will not frighten me!”

  I looked at her for a long moment, cherishing her beauty, studying all the subtle changes which the Blood had worked in her—how it had made her so extravagantly and richly the replica of her former self.

  “You find me pleasing, do you not?” she asked.

  “Always,” I said. “There was a time when I wanted so to give you the Blood that I couldn’t look at you. There was a time when I would not go to your rooms for fear that I should lure you to the Blood with all my charms, such as they ever were.”

  She was amazed. “I never dreamt it,” she said.

  I looked into the mirror. I saw the mask. I thought of the name of the Order: Talamasca. I thought of Raymond Gallant.

  “You can read nothing of my mind now, can you?” I asked her.

  “No,” she said, “nothing.” She was most puzzled.

  “It’s the way,” I said. “Because I made you. You can read the minds of others, yes.…”

  “… yes,” she answered. “The minds of our victims, yes, and when the blood flows, I see things.…”

  “… yes. And always you will see things, but never with that tool fall for the allure of the innocent, or the blood you drink will suddenly appear on your hands.”

  “I understand it,” she answered too quickly. “So Amadeo told me all that you’d taught him. Only the Evil Doer. Never the innocent, I know.”

  Again, I felt a terrible anger, that these two, these blessed children, had shut me out. I wondered when and how Amadeo had told her these secrets.

  But I knew that I should put such jealousy aside.

  The awful, awful sadness was that Amadeo was gone from me. Gone. And I could not possibly bring him back. Amadeo was in the hands of those who meant to do unspeakable things. I could not think of it. I could not. I would go mad.

  “Look into the mirror,” she said again.

  I shook my head.

  I removed my left glove and stared at my bony fingers. She gave an awful little cry and then she was ashamed.

  “Would you still see my face?” I asked.

  “No, not for both our sakes,” she said. “Not till you’ve hunted more and I have traveled with you more and am stronger, the better to be your pupil as I promised, as I will be.”

  She nodded as she spoke, her voice quite determined.

  “Lovely Bianca,” I said softly, “meant for such harsh and strong things.”

  “Yes, and I shall do them. I will always be with you. You will come in time to love me as you loved him.”

  I didn’t answer. The agony of losing him was monstrous. How could I deny it with a single syllable?

  “And what is happening to him?” I asked, “or have they merely destroyed him in some hideous fashion, for you know of course that we can die by the light of the sun, or by the heat of a terrible fire.”

  “No, not die, only suffer,” she said quickly, looking at me questioningly. “Are you not the living proof?”

  “No, die,” I said. “With me it’s what I told you, that I have lived for over a thousand years. But with Amadeo? It could be death very easily. Pray that they do not design cruelties but only horrors, that whatever they do, they do it quickly or not at all.”

  She was filled with fear, and her eyes were watching me as if there were an actual expression on the leather face mask that I wore.

  “Come now, you must learn to open this coffin,” I said to her. “And before that, I must give you more of my blood. I’ve taken so many victims, I have more now to give and you must have it or you won’t be strong as Amadeo, not at all.”

  “But … I’ve changed my clothes,” she said. “I don’t want to get them bloody.”

  I laughed. I laughed and laughed. The whole golden chamber echoed with my laughter.

  She stared at me blankly.

  “Bianca,” I said gently. “I promise you, I won’t spill a drop.”

  26

  When I awoke, I lay quiet for an hour, weak and keenly in pain. So bad was the pain, in fact, that sleep seem preferable to wakefulness, and I dreamt of things long ago, times when Pandora and I had been together and when it had not seemed possible that we would ever part.

  What finally jarred me from my uneasy slumber was the sound of Bianca screaming.

  Over and over in terror she screamed.

  I rose, somewhat stronger than the night before, and then once I was certain that I had my gloves and mask in place, I crouched beside her coffin and called out to her.

  At first she couldn’t hear me, so loud were her frantic screams. But at last, she grew quiet in her desperation.

  “You have the strength to open the coffin,” I said. “I revealed this to you last night. Put your hands against the lid and move it.”

  “Let me out of it, Marius,” she pleaded, sobbing.

  “No, you must do it for yourself.”

  Softer sobs came from her, but she followed my instructions. There came a grinding noise from the marble and the lid moved to one side, and then she rose, pushing the lid out of her way, and she freed herself from the box altogether.

  “Come here to me,” I said.

  She obeyed me, shivering with sobs, and with my gloved hands I stroked her mussed hair.

  “You knew you had the strength,” I said. “I showed you that even with your mind you could move it.”

  “Please light the candle,” she begged. “I need the light.”

  I did as she asked me to do. “You must try to quiet your soul,” I said. I took a long deep breath. “You’re strong now, and after we hunt tonight you’ll be even stronger. And as I grow ever more strong, I will give you more of my blood.”

  “Forgive me for my fear,” she whispered.

  I had little strength myself to comfort her, but I knew that she needed what little strength I had. It was hitting me again like so many violent blows that my world was dashed, that my house was ruined, that Amadeo was stolen from me.

  And then in a half swoon I saw Pandora of long ago, smiling at me, not recriminating me or tormenting me, but only speaking with me, as though we were in the garden together, at the stone table, and talking as we used to do of so many things.

  But that was gone. All was gone. Amadeo was gone. My paintings were gone.

  And there came again the desperation, the bitterness, the humiliation. I had not thought that such things could be done to me. I had not thought that I could be so miserable. I had believed myself so powerful, so very clever, so very beyond this abject grief.

  “Come now, Bianca,” I said. “We must go out, we must seek the blood. Come.” I consoled her as I consoled myself. “Here, where is your mirror?
Where is your comb? Let me comb your pretty hair for you. Look at yourself in the mirror. Did Botticelli ever paint a woman more beautiful?”

  She wiped at her red tears.

  “Are you happy again?” I asked. “Reach into the depths of your soul. Tell yourself that you are immortal. Tell yourself that death has no power over you. A glorious thing has befallen you here in the darkness, Bianca. You have become forever young, forever beautiful.”

  I wanted so to kiss her, but I couldn’t do this, and so I labored to make my words so many kisses.

  She nodded, and as she looked at me a lovely smile broke over her face, and for one moment she fell into a dreaminess which brought back all my memories of Botticelli’s genius, and even of the man himself so safely away from all these horrors, living out his life in Florence beyond what I might ever do.

  I took the comb from her bundle. I ran it through her hair. I watched her stare at the mask that was my face.

  “What is it?” I asked of her gently.

  “I want to see how badly—”

  “No you don’t,” I said.

  She began to cry again. “But how will you ever be healed? How many nights will it take?”

  All her happiness of last night was shattered.

  “Come,” I said. “We go to hunt. Now put on your cape, and follow me up the steps. We do as we’ve done before. And don’t for a moment doubt your strength, and do always as I tell you.”

  She would not do as I asked her. She hovered near the coffin, her elbow on the lid, her face stricken.

  At last I settled near to her, and I began to speak words I never thought I would hear myself utter.

  “You must be the strong one, Bianca,” I said, “you must lead us. I haven’t the strength for two just now and that is what you are demanding of me. I am ruined inside. I am ruined. No, wait, don’t interrupt what I mean to say. And don’t shed tears. Listen to me. You must give to me your small reserve of strength for I require it. I have powers quite beyond your imagining. But those powers I cannot reach just now. And until I can reach them, you must lead us forward. Lead us with your thirst and lead us with your wonder, for surely in this state you do see things as never before and you are filled with that wonder.”