by Anne Rice
The church was full of people! And we could not get out of this damned nest of bones until all of them went away.
Around me in the dark, I could feel creatures moving. I could smell the shattered, crumbling skeleton on which I lay. I could smell the earth, too, and feel dampness and the harshness of the cold.
Gabrielle’s hands were dead hands holding to me. Her face was as inflexible as bone.
I tried not to brood on this, but to lie perfectly still.
Hundreds of humans breathed and sighed above. Perhaps a thousand of them. And now they moved on into the second hymn.
What comes now, I thought dismally. The litany, the blessings? On this of all nights, I had no time to lie here musing. I must get out. The image of that red velvet coat came to me again with an irrational sense of urgency, and a flash of equally inexplicable pain.
And quite suddenly, it seemed, Gabrielle opened her eyes. Of course I didn’t see it. It was utterly black here. I felt it. I felt her limbs come to life.
And no sooner had she moved than she grew positively rigid with alarm. I slipped my hand over her mouth.
“Be still,” I whispered, but I could feel her panic.
All the horrors of the preceding night must be coming back to her, that she was now in a sepulcher with a broken skeleton, that she lay beneath a stone she could hardly lift.
“We’re in the church!” I whispered. “And we’re safe.”
The singing surged on. “Tantum ergo Sacramentum, Veneremur cernui.”
“No, it’s a Benediction,” Gabrielle gasped. She was trying to lie still, but abruptly she lost the struggle, and I had to grip her firmly in both arms.
“We must get out,” she whispered. “Lestat, the Blessed Sacrament is on the alcar, for the love of God!”
The remains of the wooden coffin clattered and creaked against the stone beneath it, causing me to roll over on top of her and force her flat with my weight.
“Now lie still, do you hear me!” I said. “We have no choice but to wait.”
But her panic was infecting me. I felt the fragments of bone crunching beneath my knees and smelled the rotting cloth. It seemed the death stench was penetrating the walls of the sepulcher, and I knew I could not bear to be shut up with that stench.
“We can’t,” she gasped. “We can’t remain here. I have to get out!” She was almost whimpering. “Lestat, I can’t.” She was feeling the walls with both hands, and then the stone above us. I heard a pure toneless sound of terror issue from her lips.
Above the hymn had stopped. The priest would go up the altar steps, lift the monstrance in both hands. He would turn to the congregation and raise the Sacred Host in blessing. Gabrielle knew that of course, and Gabrielle suddenly went mad, writhing under me, almost heaving me to the side.
“All right, listen to me!” I hissed. I could control this no longer. “We are going out. But we shall do it like proper vampires, do you hear! There are one thousand people in the church and we are going to scare them to death. I will lift the stone and we will rise up together, and when we do, raise your arms and make the most horrible face you can muster and cry out if you can. That will make them fall back, instead of pouncing upon us and dragging us off to prison, and then we’ll rush to the door.”
She couldn’t even stop to answer, she was already struggling, slamming the rotted boards with her heels.
I rose up, giving the marble slab a great shove with both hands, and leapt out of the vault just as I had said I would do, pulling my cloak up in a giant arc.
I landed upon the floor of the choir in a blaze of candlelight, letting out the most powerful cry I could make.
Hundreds rose to their feet before me, hundreds of mouths opening to scream.
Giving another shout, I grabbed Gabrielle’s hand and lunged towards them, leaping over the Communion rail. She gave a lovely high-pitched wail, her left hand raised as a claw as I pulled her down the aisle. Everywhere there was panic, men and women clutching for children, shrieking and falling backwards.
The heavy doors gave at once on the black sky and the gusting breeze. I threw Gabrielle ahead of me and, turning back, made the loudest shriek that I could. I bared my fangs at the writhing, screaming congregation, and unable to tell whether some pursued or merely fell towards me in panic, I reached into my pockets and showered the marble floor with gold coins.
“The devil throws money!” someone screeched.
We tore through the cemetery and across the fields.
Within seconds, we had gained the woods and I could smell the stables of a large house that lay ahead of us beyond the trees.
I stood still, bent almost double in concentration, and summoned the horses. And we ran towards them, hearing the dull thunder of their hooves against the stalls.
Bolting over the low hedge with Gabrielle beside me, I pulled the door off its hinges just as a fine gelding raced out of his broken stall, and we sprang onto his back, Gabrielle scrambling into place before me as I threw my arm around her.
I dug my heels into the animal and rode south into the woods and towards Paris.
8
TRIED to form a plan as we approached the city, but in truth I was not sure at all how to proceed.
There was no avoiding these filthy little monsters. We were riding towards a battle. And it was little different from the morning on which I’d gone out to kill the wolves, counting upon my rage and my will to carry me through.
We had scarcely entered the scattered farmhouses of Montmartre when we heard for a split second their faint murmuring. Noxious as a vapor, it seemed.
Gabrielle and I knew we had to drink at once, in order to be prepared for them.
We stopped at one of the small farms, crept through the orchard to the back door, and found inside the man and wife dozing at an empty hearth.
When it was finished, we came out of the house together and into the little kitchen garden where we stood still for a moment, looking at the pearl gray sky. No sound of the others. Only the stillness, the clarity of the fresh blood, and the threat of rain as the clouds gathered overhead.
I turned and silently bid the gelding to come to me. And gathering the reins, I turned to Gabrielle.
“I see no other way but to go into Paris,” I told her, “to face these little beasts head on. And until they show themselves and start the war all over again, there are things that I must do. I have to think about Nicki. I have to talk to Roget.”
“This isn’t the time for that mortal nonsense,” she said.
The dirt of the church sepulcher still clung to the cloth of her coat and to her blond hair, and she looked like an angel dragged in the dust.
“I won’t have them come between me and what I mean to do,” I said.
She took a deep breath.
“Do you want to lead these creatures to your beloved Monsieur Roget?” she asked.
That was too dreadful to contemplate.
The first few drops of rain were falling and I felt cold in spite of the blood. In a moment it would be raining hard.
“All right,” I said. “Nothing can be done until this is finished!” I said. I mounted the horse and reached for her hand.
“Injury only spurs you on, doesn’t it?” she asked. She was studying me. “It would only strengthen you, whatever they did or tried to do.”
“Now this is what I call mortal nonsense!” I said. “Come on!”
“Lestat,” she said soberly. “They put your stable boy in a gentleman’s frock coat after they killed him. Did you see the coat? Hadn’t you seen it before?”
That damned red velvet coat …
“I have seen it,” she said. “I had looked at it for hours at my bedside in Paris. It was Nicolas de Lenfent’s coat.”
I looked at her for a long moment. But I don’t think I saw her at all. The rage building in me was absolutely silent. It will be rage until I have proof that it must be grief, I thought. Then I wasn’t thinking.
Vaguely, I knew
she had no notion yet how strong our passions could be, how they could paralyze us. I think I moved my lips, but nothing came out.
“I don’t think they’ve killed him, Lestat,” she said.
Again I tried to speak. I wanted to ask, Why do you say that, but I couldn’t. I was staring forward into the orchard.
“I think he is alive,” she said. “And that he is their prisoner. Otherwise they would have left his body there and never bothered with that stable boy.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not.” I had to force my mouth to form the words.
“The coat was a message.”
I couldn’t stand this any longer.
“I’m going after them,” I said. “Do you want to return to the tower? If I fail at this …”
“I have no intention of leaving you,” she said.
• • •
THE rain was falling in earnest by the time we reached the boulevard du Temple, and the wet paving stones magnified a thousand lamps.
My thoughts had hardened into strategies that were more instinct than reason. And I was as ready for a fight as I have ever been. But we had to find out where we stood. How many of them were there? And what did they really want? Was it to capture and destroy us, or to frighten us and drive us off? I had to quell my rage, I had to remember they were childish, susperstitious, conceivably easy to scatter or scare.
As soon as we reached the high ancient tenements near Notre Dame, I heard them near us, the vibration coming as in a silver flash and vanishing as quickly again.
Gabrielle drew herself up, and I felt her left hand on my wrist. I saw her right hand on the hilt of her sword.
We had entered a crooked alleyway that turned blindly in the dark in front of us, the iron clatter of the horse’s shoes shattering the silence, and I struggled not to be unnerved by the sound itself.
It seemed we saw them at the same moment.
Gabrielle pressed back against me, and I swallowed the gasp that would have given an impression of fear.
High above us, on either side of the narrow thoroughfare, were their white faces just over the eaves of the tenements, a faint gleam against the lowering sky and the soundless drifts of silver rain.
I drove the horse forward in a rush of scraping and clattering. Above they streaked like rats over the roof. Their voices rose in a faint howling mortals could never have heard.
Gabrielle stifled a little cry as we saw their white arms and legs descending the walls ahead of us, and behind I heard the soft thud of their feet on the stones.
“Straight on,” I shouted, and drawing my sword, I drove right over the two ragged figures who’d dropped down in our path. “Damnable creatures, out of my way,” I shouted, hearing their screams underfoot.
I glimpsed anguished faces for a moment. Those above vanished and those behind us seemed to weaken and we bore ahead, putting yards between us and our pursuers as we came into the deserted place de Grève.
But they were regathering on the edges of the square, and this time I was hearing their distinct thoughts, one of them demanding what power was it we had, and why should they be frightened, and another insisting that they close in.
Some force surely came from Gabrielle at that moment because I could see them visibly fall back when she threw her glance in their direction and tightened her grip on the sword.
“Stop, stand them off!” she said under her breath. “They’re terrified.” Then I heard her curse. Because flying towards us out of the shadows of the Hôtel-Dieu, there came at least six more of the little demons, their thin white limbs barely swathed in rags, their hair flying, those dreadful wails coming out of their mouths. They were rallying the others. The malice that surrounded us was gaining force.
The horse reared, and almost threw us. They were commanding it to halt as surely as I commanded it to go on.
I grabbed Gabrielle about the waist, leapt off the horse, and ran top speed for the doors of Notre Dame.
A horrid derisive babble rose silently in my ears, wails and cries and threats:
“You dare not, you dare not!” Malice like the heat of a blast furnace opened upon us, as their feet came thumping and splashing around us, and I felt their hands struggling to grab hold of my sword and my coat.
But I was certain of what would happen when we reached the church. I gave it one final spurt, heaving Gabrielle ahead of me so that together we slid through the doors across the threshold of the cathedral and landed sprawling within on the stones.
Screams. Dreadful dry screams curling upwards and then an upheaval, as if the entire mob had been scattered by a cannon blast.
I scrambled to my feet, laughing out loud at them. But I was not waiting so near the door to hear more. Gabrielle was on her feet and pulling me after her and together we hurried deep into the shadowy nave, past one lofty archway after another until we were near to the dim candles of the sanctuary, and then seeking a dark and empty corner by a side altar, we sank down together on our knees.
“Just like those damned wolves!” I said. “A bloody ambush.”
“Shhhhh, be quiet a moment,” Gabrielle said as she clung to me. “Or my immortal heart will burst.”
9
FTER a long moment, I felt her stiffen. She was looking towards the square.
“Don’t think of Nicolas,” she said. “They are waiting and they are listening. They are hearing everything that goes on in our minds.”
“But what are they thinking?” I whispered. “What is going on in their heads?”
I could feel her concentration.
I pressed her close, and looked straight at the silver light that came through the distant open doors. I could hear them too now, but just that low shimmer of sound coming from all of them collected there.
But as I stared at the rain, there came over me the strongest sense of peace. It was almost sensuous. It seemed to me we should yield to them, that it was foolish to resist them further. All things would be resolved were we merely to go out to them and give ourselves over. They would not torture Nicolas, whom they had in their power; they would not tear him limb from limb.
I saw Nicolas in their hands. He wore only his lace shirt and breeches because they had taken the coat. And I heard his screams as they pulled his arms from the sockets. I cried out No, putting my own hand over my mouth so that I did not rouse the mortals in the church.
Gabrielle reached up and touched my lips with her fingers.
“It’s not being done to him,” she said under her breath. “It’s merely a threat. Don’t think of him.”
“He’s still alive, then,” I whispered.
“So they want us to believe. Listen!”
There came again the sense of peace, the summons, that’s what it was, to join them, the voice saying Come out of the church. Surrender to us, we welcome you, and we will not harm either of you if only you come.
I turned towards the door and rose to my feet. Anxiously Gabrielle rose beside me, cautioning me again with her hand. She seemed wary of even speaking to me as we both looked at that great archway of silvery light.
You are lying to us, I said. You have no power over us! It was a rolling current of defiance moving through the distant door. Surrender to you? If we do that then what’s to stop you from holding the three of us! Why should we come out? Within this church we are safe; we can conceal ourselves in its deepest burial vaults. We could hunt among the faithful, drink their blood in the chapels and niches so skillfully we’d never be discovered, sending our victims out confused to die in the streets afterwards. And what would you do, you who cannot even cross the door! Besides, we don’t believe you have Nicolas. Show him to us. Let him come to the door and speak.
Gabrielle was in a welter of confusion. She was scanning me, desperate to know what I said. And she was clearly hearing them, which I could not do when I was sending these impulses.
It seemed their pulse weakened, but it had not stopped.
It went on as it had before, as if I’d not answered
it, as if it were someone humming. It was promising truce again, and now it seemed to speak of rapture, that in the great pleasure of joining with it, all conflict would be resolved. It was sensuous again, it was beautiful.
“Miserable cowards, the lot of you.” I sighed. I said the words aloud this time, so that Gabrielle could hear as well. “Send Nicolas into the church.”
The hum of the voice became thin. It went on, but beyond it there was a hollow silence as if other voices had been withdrawn and only one or two remained now. Then I heard the thin, chaotic strains of argument and rebellion.
Gabrielle’s eyes narrowed.
Silence. Only mortals out there now, weaving their way against the wind across the place de Grève. I didn’t believe they would withdraw. Now what do we do to save Nicki?
I blinked my eyes. I felt weary suddenly; it was almost a feeling of despair. And I thought confusedly, This is ridiculous, I never despair! Others do that, not me. I go on fighting no matter what happens. Always. And in my exhaustion and anger, I saw Magnus leaping and jumping in the fire, I saw the grimace on his face before the flames consumed him and he disappeared. Was that despair?
The thought paralyzed me. Horrified me as the reality of it had done then. And I had the oddest feeling that someone else was speaking to me of Magnus. That is why the thought of Magnus had come into my head!
“Too clever …” Gabrielle whispered.
“Don’t listen to it. It’s playing tricks with our very thoughts,” I said.
But as I stared past her at the open doorway, I saw a small figure appear. Compact it was, the figure of a young boy, not a man.
I ached for it to be Nicolas, but knew immediately that it was not. It was smaller than Nicolas, though rather heavier of build. And the creature was not human.
Gabrielle made some soft wondering sound. It sounded almost like a prayer in its reference.