by Anne Rice
“Ah, but it is too sublime,” sang the old queen with her eyes on the domed ceiling. “From my stone pillow I have dreamed dreams of the mortal world above. I have heard its voices, its new music, as lullabies as I lie in my grave. I have envisioned its fantastical discoveries, I have known its courage in the timeless sanctum of my thoughts. And though it shuts me out with its dazzling forms, I long for one with the strength to roam it fearlessly, to ride the Devil’s Road through its heart.”
The gray-eyed boy was beside himself.
“Dispense with the trial,” he said, glaring at the leader. “Light the pyre now.”
The queen stepped back out of my way with an exaggerated gesture, as the boy reached for the torch nearest him, and I rushed at him, snatching the torch away from him, and heaving him up towards the ceiling, head over heels, so that he came tumbling in that manner all the way down. I stamped out the torch.
That left one more. And the coven was in perfect disorder, several rushing to aid the boy, the others murmuring to one another, the leader stock-still as if in a dream.
And in this interval I went forward, climbed up the pyre and tore loose the front of the little wooden cage.
Nicolas looked like an animated corpse. His eyes were leaden, and his mouth twisted as if he were smiling at me, hating me, from the other side of the grave. I dragged him free of the cage and brought him down to the dirt floor. He was feverish, and though I ignored it and would have concealed it if I could, he shoved at me and cursed me under his breath.
The old queen watched in fascination. I glanced at Gabrielle, who watched without a particle of fear. I drew out the pearl rosary from my waistcoat and letting the crucifix dangle, I placed the rosary around Nicolas’s neck. He stared stuporously down at the little cross, and then he began to laugh. The contempt, the malice, came out of him in this low metallic sound. It was the very opposite of the sounds made by the vampires. You could hear the human blood in it, the human thickness of it, echoing against the walls. Ruddy and hot and strangely unfinished he seemed suddenly, the only mortal among us, like a child thrown among porcelain dolls.
The coven was more confused than ever. The two burnt-out torches still lay untouched.
“Now, by your own rules, you cannot harm him,” I said. “Yet it’s a vampire who has given him the supernatural protection. Tell me, how to compass that?”
I carried Nicki forward. And Gabrielle at once reached out to take him in her arms.
He accepted this, though he stared at her as if he didn’t know her and even lifted his fingers to touch her face. She took his hand away as she might the hand of a baby, and kept her eyes fixed on the leader and on me.
“If your leader has no words for you now, I have words,” I said. “Go wash yourselves in the waters of the Seine, and clothe yourselves like humans if you can remember how, and prowl among men as you are obviously meant to do.”
The defeated boy vampire stumbled back into the circle, pushing roughly away those who had helped him to his feet.
“Armand,” he implored the silent auburn-haired leader. “Bring the coven to order! Armand! Save us now!”
“Why in the name of hell,” I outshouted him, “did the devil give you beauty, agility, eyes to see visions, minds to cast spells?”
Their eyes were fixed on me, all of them. The gray-haired boy cried out the name “Armand” again, but in vain.
“You waste your gifts!” I said. “And worse, you waste your immortality! Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past.”
Perfect silence reigned. I could hear Nicki’s slow breathing. I could feel his warmth. I could feel his numbed fascination struggling against death itself.
“Have you no cunning?” I asked the others, my voice swelling in the stillness. “Have you no craft? How did I, an orphan, stumble upon so much possibility, when you, nurtured as you are by these evil parents”—I broke off to stare at the leader and the furious boy—“grope like blind things under the earth?”
“The power of Satan will blast you into hell,” the boy bellowed, gathering all his remaining strength.
“You keep saying that!” I said. “And it keeps not happening, as we can all see!”
Loud murmurs of assent!
“And if you really thought it would happen,” I said, “you would never have bothered to bring me here.”
Louder voices in agreement.
I looked at the small forlorn figure of the leader. And all eyes turned away from me to him. Even the mad queen vampire looked at him.
And in the stillness I heard him whisper:
“It is finished.”
Not even the tormented ones in the wall made a sound.
And the leader spoke again:
“Go now, all of you, it is at an end.”
“Armand, no!” the boy pleaded.
But the others were backing away, faces concealed behind hands as they whispered. The drums were cast aside, the single torch was hung upon the wall.
I watched the leader. I knew his words weren’t meant to release us.
And after he had silently driven out the protesting boy with the others, so that only the queen remained with him, he turned his gaze once again to me.
3
HE great empty room beneath its immense dome, with only the two vampires watching us, seemed all the more ghastly, the one torch giving a feeble and gloomy light.
Silently I considered: Will the others leave the cemetery, or hover at the top of the stairs? Will any of them allow me to take Nicki alive from this place? The boy will remain near, but the boy is weak; the old queen will do nothing. That leaves only the leader, really. But I must not be impulsive now.
He was still staring at me and saying nothing.
“Armand?” I said respectfully. “May I address you in this way?” I drew closer, scanning him for the slightest change of expression. “You are obviously the leader. And you are the one who can explain all this to us.”
But these words were a poor cover for my thoughts. I was appealing to him. I was asking him how he had led them in all this, he who appeared as ancient as the old queen, compassing some depth they would not understand. I pictured him standing before the altar of Notre Dame again, that ethereal expression on his face. And I found myself believing perfectly in him, and the possibility of him, this ancient one who had stood silent all this while.
I think I searched him now for just an instant of human feeling! That’s what I thought wisdom would reveal. And the mortal in me, the vulnerable one who had cried in the inn at the vision of the chaos, said:
“Armand, what is the meaning of all this?”
It seemed the brown eyes faltered. But then the face so subtly transformed itself to rage, that I drew back.
I didn’t believe my senses. The sudden changes he had undergone in Notre Dame were nothing to this. And such a perfect incarnation of malice I’d never seen. Even Gabrielle moved away. She raised her right hand to shield Nicki, and I stepped back until I was beside her and our arms touched.
But in the same miraculous way, the hatred melted. The face was again that of a sweet and fresh mortal boy.
The old queen vampire smiled almost wanly and ran her white claws through her hair.
“You turn to me for explanations?” the leader asked.
His eyes moved over Gabrielle and the dazed figure of Nicolas against her shoulder. Then returned to me.
“I could speak until the end of the world,” he said, “and I could never tell you what you have destroyed here.”
I thought the old queen made some derisive sound, but I was too engaged with him, the softness of his speech and the great raging anger within.
“Since the beginning of time,” he said, “these mysteries have existed.” He seemed small standing in this vast chamber, the voice issuing from him effortlessly, his hands limp at his sides. “Since the ancient days there have been our kind hau
nting the cities of man, preying upon him by night as God and the devil commanded us to do. The chosen of Satan we are, and those admitted to our ranks had first to prove themselves through a hundred crimes before the Dark Gift of immortality was given to them.”
He came just a little nearer to me, the torchlight glimmering in his eyes.
“Before their loved ones they appeared to die,” he said, “and with only a small infusion of our blood did they endure the terror of the coffin as they waited for us to come. Then and only then was the Dark Gift given, and they were sealed again in the grave after, until their thirst should give them the strength to break the narrow box and rise.”
His voice grew slightly louder, more resonant.
“It was death they knew in those dark chambers,” he said. “It was death and the power of evil they understood as they rose, breaking open the coffin, and the iron doors that held them in. And pity the weak, those who couldn’t break out. Those whose wails brought mortals the day after—for none would answer by night. We gave no mercy to them.
“But those who rose, ah, those were the vampires who walked the earth, tested, purified, Children of Darkness, born of a fledgling’s blood, never the full power of an ancient master, so that time would bring the wisdom to use the Dark Gifts before they grew truly strong. And on these were imposed the Rules of Darkness. To live among the dead, for we are dead things, returning always to one’s own grave or one very nearly like it. To shun the places of light, luring victims away from the company of others to suffer death in unholy and haunted places. And to honor forever the power of God, the crucifix about the neck, the Sacraments. And never never to enter the House of God, lest he strike you powerless, casting you into hell, ending your reign on earth in blazing torment.”
He paused. He looked at the old queen for the first time, and it seemed, though I could not truly tell, that her face maddened him.
“You scorn these things,” he said to her. “Magnus scorned these things!” He commenced to tremble. “It was the nature of his madness, as it is the nature of yours, but I tell you you do not understand these mysteries! You shatter them like so much glass, but you have no strength, no power save ignorance. You break and that is all.”
He turned away, hesitating as if he would not go on, and looking about at the vast crypt.
I heard the old vampire queen very softly singing.
She was chanting something under her breath, and she began to rock back and forth, her head to one side, her eyes dreamy. Once again, she looked beautiful.
“It is finished for my children,” the leader whispered. “It is finished and done, for they know now they can disregard all of it. The things that bound us together, gave us the strength to endure as damned things! The mysteries that protected us here.”
Again he looked at me.
“And you ask me for explanations as if it were inexplicable!” he said. “You, for whom the working of the Dark Trick is an act of shameless greed. You gave it to the very womb that bore you! Why not to this one, the devil’s fiddler, whom you worship from afar every night?”
“Have I not told you?” sang the vampire queen. “Haven’t we always known? There is nothing to fear in the Sign of the Cross, nor the Holy Water, nor the Sacrament itself …” She repeated the words, varying the melody under her breath, adding as she went on. “And the old rites, the incense, the fire, the vows spoken, when we thought we saw the Evil One in the dark, whispering …”
“Silence!” said the leader, dropping his voice. His hands almost went to his ears in a strangely human gesture. Like a boy he looked, almost lost. God, that our immortal bodies could be such varied prisons for us, that our immortal faces should be such masks for our true souls.
Again he fixed his eyes on me. I thought for a moment there would be another of those ghastly transformations or that some uncontrollable violence would come from him, and I hardened myself.
But he was imploring me silently.
Why did this come about! His voice almost dried in his throat as he repeated it aloud, as he tried to curb his rage. “You explain to me! Why you, you with the strength of ten vampires and the courage of a hell full of devils, crashing through the world in your brocade and your leather boots! Lelio, the actor from the House of Thesbians, making us into grand drama on the boulevard! Tell me! Tell me why!”
“It was Magnus’s strength, Magnus’s genius,” sang the woman vampire with the most wistful smile.
“No!” He shook his head. “I tell you, he is beyond all account. He knows no limit and so he has no limit. But why!”
He moved just a little closer, not seeming to walk but to come more clearly into focus as an apparition might.
“Why you,” he demanded, “with the boldness to walk their streets, break their locks, call them by name. They dress your hair, they fit your clothes! You gamble at their tables! Deceiving them, embracing them, drinking their blood only steps from where other mortals laugh and dance. You who shun cemeteries and burst from crypts in churches. Why you! Thoughtless, arrogant, ignorant, and disdainful! You give me the explanation. Answer me!”
My heart was racing. My face was warm and pulsing with blood. I was in no fear of him now, but I was angry beyond all mortal anger, and I didn’t fully understand why.
His mind—I had wanted to pierce his mind—and this is what I heard, this superstition, this absurdity. He was no sublime spirit who understood what his followers had not. He had not believed it. He had believed in it, a thousand times worse!
And I realized quite clearly what he was—not demon or angel at all, but a sensibility forged in a dark time when the small orb of the sun traveled the dome of the heavens, and the stars were no more than tiny lanterns describing gods and goddesses upon a closed night. A time when man was the center of this great world in which we roam, a time when for every question there had been an answer. That was what he was, a child of olden days when witches had danced beneath the moon and knights had battled dragons.
Ah, sad lost child, roaming the catacombs beneath a great city and an incomprehensible century. Maybe your mortal form is more fitting than I supposed.
But there was no time to mourn for him, beautiful as he was. Those entombed in the walls suffered at his command. Those he had sent out of the chamber could be called back.
I had to think of a reply to his question that he would be able to accept. The truth wasn’t enough. It had to be arranged poetically the way that the old thinkers would have arranged it in the world before the age of reason had come to be.
“My answer?” I said softly. I was gathering my thoughts and I could almost feel Gabrielle’s warning, Nicki’s fear. “I’m no dealer in mysteries,” I said, “no lover of philosophy. But it’s plain enough what has happened here.”
He studied me with a strange earnestness.
“If you fear so much the power of God,” I said, “then the teachings of the Church aren’t unknown to you. You must know that the forms of goodness change with the ages, that there are saints for all times under heaven.”
Visibly he hearkened to this, warmed to the words I used.
“In ancient days,” I said, “there were martyrs who quenched the flames that sought to burn them, mystics who rose into the air as they heard the voice of God. But as the world changed, so changed the saints. What are they now but obedient nuns and priests? They build hospitals and orphanages, but they do not call down the angels to rout armies or tame the savage beast.”
I could see no change in him but I pressed on.
“And so it is with evil, obviously. It changes its form. How many men in this age believe in the crosses that frighten your followers? Do you think mortals above are speaking to each other of heaven and hell? Philosophy is what they talk about, and science! What does it matter to them if white-faced haunts prowl a churchyard after dark? A few more murders in a wilderness of murders? How can this be of interest to God or the devil or to man?”
I heard again the old queen vampir
e laughing.
But Armand didn’t speak or move.
“Even your playground is about to be taken from you,” I continued. “This cemetery in which you hide is about to be removed altogether from Paris. Even the bones of our ancestors are no longer sacred in this secular age.”
His face softened suddenly. He couldn’t conceal his shock.
“Les Innocents destroyed!” he whispered. “You’re lying to me … ”
“I never lie,” I said off hand. “At least not to those I don’t love. The people of Paris don’t want the stench of graveyards around them anymore. The emblems of the dead don’t matter to them as they matter to you. Within a few years, markets, streets, and houses will cover this spot. Commerce. Practicality. That is the eighteenth-century world.”
“Stop!” he whispered. “Les Innocents has existed as long as I have existed!” His boyish face was strained. The old queen was undisturbed.
“Don’t you see?” I said softly. “It is a new age. It requires a new evil. And I am that new evil.” I paused, watching him. “I am the vampire for these times.”
He had not foreseen my point. And I saw in him for the first time a glimmer of terrible understanding, the first glimmer of real fear.
I made a small accepting gesture.
“This incident in the village church tonight,” I said cautiously, “it was vulgar, I’m inclined to agree. My actions on the stage of theater, worse still. But these were blunders. And you know they aren’t the source of your rancor. Forget them for the moment and try to envision my beauty and my power. Try to see the evil that I am. I stalk the world in mortal dress—the worst of fiends, the monster who looks exactly like everyone else.”
The woman vampire made a low song of her laughter. I could feel only pain from him, and from her the warm emanation of her love.
“Think of it, Armand,” I pressed carefully. “Why should Death lurk in the shadows? Why should Death wait at the gate? There is no bedchamber, no ballroom that I cannot enter. Death in the glow of the hearth, Death on tiptoe in the corridor, that is what I am. Speak to me of the Dark Gifts—I use them. I’m Gentleman Death in silk and lace, come to put out the candles. The canker in the heart of the rose.”