by Anne Rice
“To a royal cell we were now committed, with graceful chairs and tables, and a fine carpet, and dishes of meat and fish to eat.
“Then at sunset, we heard cheers as the King and the Queen appeared in the palace; all the court went to bow to them, singing anthems to the beauty of their pale skin and their shimmering hair; and to the bodies that had miraculously healed after the assault of the conspirators; all the palace echoed with these hymns of praise.
“But when this little spectacle was finished, we were taken into the bedchamber of the royal couple, and for the first time, by the small light of distant lamps, we beheld the transformation with our own eyes.
“We saw two pale yet magnificent beings, resembling in all particulars what they had been when they were alive; but there was an eerie luminescence surrounding them; their skin was no longer skin. And their minds were no longer entirely their minds. Yet gorgeous they were. As you can well imagine, all of you. Oh, yes, gorgeous, as though the moon had come down from heaven and fashioned them with its light. Amid their dazzling gold furniture they stood, draped in finery, and staring at us with eyes that gleamed like obsidian. And then, with a wholly different voice, a voice softly shaded by music, it seemed, the King spoke:
“ ‘Khayman’s told you what has befallen us,’ he said. ‘We stand before you the beneficiaries of a great miracle; for we have triumphed over certain death. We are now quite beyond the limitations and needs of human beings; and we see and understand things which were withheld from us before.’
“But the Queen’s facade gave way immediately. In a hissing whisper she said, ‘You must explain this to us! What has your spirit done?’
“We were in worse danger than ever from these monsters; and I tried to convey this warning to Mekare, but at once the Queen laughed. ‘Do you think I don’t know what you are thinking?’ she said.
“But the King begged her to be silent. ‘Let the witches use their powers,’ he said. ‘You know that we have always revered you.’
“ ‘Yes.’ The Queen sneered. ‘And you sent this curse upon us.’
“At once I averred that we had not done it, that we had kept faith when we left the kingdom, that we had gone back to our home. And as Mekare studied the pair of them in silence, I begged them to understand that if the spirit had done this, he had done it of his own whim.
“ ‘Whim!’ the Queen said. ‘What do you mean by such a word as whim? What has happened to us? What are we!’ she asked again. Then she drew back her lips for us to see her teeth. We beheld the fangs in her mouth, tiny, yet sharp as knives. And the King demonstrated to us this change as well.
“ ‘The better to draw the blood,’ he whispered. ‘Do you know what this thirst is to us! We cannot satisfy it! Three, four men a night die to feed us, yet we go to our bed tortured by thirst.’
“The Queen tore at her hair as if she would give in to screaming. But the King laid his hand on her arm. ‘Advise us, Mekare and Maharet,’ he said. ‘For we would understand this transformation and how it might be used for good.’
“ ‘Yes,’ the Queen said, struggling to recover. ‘For surely such a thing cannot happen without reason.…’ Then losing her conviction, she fell quiet. Indeed it seemed her small pragmatic view of things, ever puny and seeking for justifications, had collapsed utterly, while the King clung to his illusions as men often do, until very late in life.
“Now, as they fell silent, Mekare went forward and laid her hands upon the King. She laid her hands upon his shoulders; and closed her eyes. Then she laid her hands upon the Queen in the same manner, though the Queen glared at her with venom in her eyes.
“ ‘Explain to us,’ Mekare said, looking at the Queen, ‘what happened at the very moment. What do you remember? What did you see?’
“The Queen was silent, her face drawn and suspicious. Her beauty had been, in truth, enhanced by this transformation, yet there was something repellent in her, as if she were not the flower now but the replica of the flower made of pure white wax. And as she grew reflective she appeared somber and vicious, and instinctively I drew close to Mekare to protect her from what might take place.
“But then the Queen spoke:
“ ‘They came to kill us, the traitors! They would blame it on the spirits; that was the plan. And all to eat the flesh again, the flesh of their mothers and fathers, and the flesh for which they loved to hunt. They came into the house and they stabbed me with their daggers, I their sovereign Queen.’ She paused as if seeing these things again before her eyes. ‘I fell as they slashed at me, as they drove their daggers into my breast. One cannot live with such wounds as I received; and so as I fell to the floor, I knew that I was dead! Do you hear what I am saying? I knew that nothing could save me. My blood was pouring out onto the floor.
“ ‘But even as I saw it pooling before me, I realized I was not in my wounded body, that I had already left it, that death had taken me and was drawing me upwards sharply as if through a great tunnel to where I would suffer no more!
“ ‘I wasn’t frightened; I felt nothing; I looked down and saw myself lying pale and covered with blood in that little house. Yet I did not care. I was free of it. But suddenly something took hold of me, took hold of my invisible being! The tunnel was gone; I was caught in a great mesh like a fisherman’s net. With all my strength I pushed against it, and it gave with my strength but it did not break and it gripped me and held me fast and I could not rise through it.
“ ‘When I tried to scream I was in my body again! I felt the agony of my wounds as if the knives were cutting me afresh. But this net, this great net, it still had a hold of me, and instead of being the endless thing it had been before, it was now contracted into a tighter weave like the weave of a great silk veil.
“ ‘And all about me this thing—visible yet invisible—whirled as if it were wind, lifting me, casting me down, turning me about. The blood gushed from my wounds. And it ran into the weave of this veil, just as it might into the mesh of any fabric.
“ ‘And that which had been transparent was now drenched in blood. And a monstrous thing I saw, shapeless, and enormous, with my blood broadcast throughout it. And yet this thing had another property to it, a center, it seemed, a tiny burning center which was in me, and ran riot in my body like a frightened animal. Through my limbs it ran, thumping and beating. A heart with legs scampering. In my belly it circled as I clawed at myself. I would have cut myself open to get this thing out of me!
“ ‘And it seemed the great invisible part of this thing—the blood mist that surrounded me and enveloped me—was controlled by this tiny center, twisting this way and that as it scurried within me, racing into my hands one moment and into my feet the next. Up my spine it ran.
“ ‘I would die, surely I would die, I thought. Then came a moment of blindness! Silence. It had killed me, I was certain. I should rise again, should I not? Yet suddenly I opened my eyes; I sat up off the floor as if no attack had befallen me; and I saw so clearly! Khayman, the glaring torch in his hand!—the trees of the garden—why, it was as if I had never truly seen such simple things for what they were! The pain was gone completely, from inside and from my wounds as well. Only the light hurt my eyes; I could not endure its brilliance. Yet I had been saved from death; my body had been glorified and made perfect. Except that—’ And there she stopped.
“She stared before her, indifferent for a moment. Then she said, ‘Khayman has told you all the rest.’ She looked to the King who stood beside her, watching her; trying to fathom the things she said, just as we tried to fathom them.
“ ‘Your spirit,’ she said. ‘It tried to destroy us. But something else had happened; some great power has intervened to triumph over its diabolical evil.’ Then again her conviction deserted her. The lies stopped on her tongue. Her face was suddenly cold with menace. And sweetly she said: ‘Tell us, witches, wise witches. You who know all the secrets. What is the name for what we are!’
“Mekare sighed. She looked at me. I knew she d
idn’t want to speak now on this thing. And the old warning of the spirits came back. The Egyptian King and Queen would ask us questions and they would not like our answers. We would be destroyed.…
“Then the Queen turned her back. She sat down and bowed her head. And it was then, and only then, that her true sadness came to the fore. The King smiled at us, wearily. ‘We are in pain, witches,’ he said. ‘We could bear the burden of this transformation if only we understood it better. You, who have communed with all things invisible; tell us what you know of such magic; help us, if you will, for you know that we never meant to harm you, only to spread the truth and the law.’
“We did not dwell on the stupidity of this statement—the virtue of spreading the truth through wholesale slaughter and so forth and so on. But Mekare demanded that the King now tell what he could recall.
“He spoke of things which you—all of you seated here—surely know. Of how he was dying; and how he tasted the blood from his wife which had covered his face; and of how his body quickened, and wanted this blood, and then how he took it from his wife and she gave it; and then he became as she was. But for him there was no mysterious cloud of blood. There was no thing running rampant within him. ‘The thirst, it’s unbearable,’ he said to us. ‘Unbearable.’ And he too bowed his head.
“We stood in silence for a moment looking at each other, Mekare and I, and as always, Mekare spoke first:
“ ‘We know no name for what you are,’ she said. ‘We know no stories of such a thing ever happening in this world before. But it’s plain enough what took place.’ She fixed her eyes upon the Queen. ‘As you perceived your own death, your soul sought to make its swift escape from suffering as souls so often do. But as it rose, the spirit Amel seized it, this thing being invisible as your soul was invisible; and in the normal course of things you might have easily overcome this earthbound entity and gone on to realms we do not know.
“ ‘But this spirit had long before wrought a change within himself; a change that was utterly new. This spirit had tasted the blood of humans whom he had pierced or tormented, as you yourself have seen him do. And your body, lying there, and full of blood despite its many wounds, had life still.
“ ‘And so the spirit, thirsting, plunged down into your body, his invisible form still wedded to your soul.
“ ‘Still you might have triumphed, fighting off this evil thing as possessed persons often do. But now the tiny core of this spirit—the thing of matter which is the roaring center of all spirits, from which their endless energy comes—was suddenly filled with blood as never in the past.
“ ‘And so the fusion of blood and timeless tissue was a million times magnified and accelerated; and blood flowed through all his body, both material and nonmaterial, and this was the blood cloud that you saw.
“ ‘But it is the pain you felt which is most significant, this pain which traveled through your limbs. For surely as inevitable death came to your body, the spirit’s tiny core merged with the flesh of your body as its energy had already merged with your soul. It found some special place or organ in which matter merged with matter as spirit had already merged with spirit; and a new thing was formed.’
“ ‘Its heart and my heart,’ the Queen whispered. ‘They became one.’ And closing her eyes, she lifted her hand and laid it on her breast.
“We said nothing, for this seemed a simplification, and we did not believe the heart was the center of intellect or emotion. For us, it had been the brain which controlled these things. And in that moment, both Mekare and I saw a terrible memory—our mother’s heart and brain thrown down and trampled in ashes and dust.
“But we fought this memory. It was abhorrent that this pain should be glimpsed by those who had been its cause.
“The King pressed us with a question. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘you’ve explained what has happened to Akasha. This spirit is in her, core wedded perhaps to core. But what is in me? I felt no such pain, no such scurrying demon. I felt … I felt only the thirst when her bloodied hands touched my lips.’ He looked to his wife.
“The shame, the horror, they felt over the thirst was clear.
“ ‘But the same spirit is in you, too,’ Mekare answered. ‘There is but one Amel. Its core resides in the Queen, but it is in you also.’
“ ‘How is such a thing possible?’ asked the King.
“ ‘This being has a great invisible part,’ Mekare said. ‘Were you to have seen it in its entirety, before this catastrophe took place, you would have seen something almost without end.’
“ ‘Yes,’ the Queen confessed. ‘It was as if the net covered the whole sky.’
“Mekare explained: ‘It is only by concentrating such immense size that these spirits achieve any physical strength. Left on their own, they are as clouds over the horizon; greater even; they have now and then boasted to us that they have no true boundaries, though this is not likely the truth.’
“The King stared at his wife.
“ ‘But how can it be released!’ demanded Akasha.
“ ‘Yes. How can it be made to depart!’ the King asked.
“Neither of us wanted to answer. We wondered that the answer was not obvious to them both. ‘Destroy your body,’ Mekare said to the Queen finally. ‘And it will be destroyed as well.’
“The King looked at Mekare with disbelief. ‘Destroy her body!’ Helplessly he looked at his wife.
“But Akasha merely smiled bitterly. The words came as no surprise to her. For a long moment, she said nothing. She merely looked at us with plain hatred; then she looked at the King. When she looked to us, she put the question. ‘We are dead things, aren’t we? We cannot live if it departs. We do not eat; we do not drink, save for the blood it wants; our bodies throw off no waste any longer; we have not changed in one single particular since that awful night; we are not alive anymore.’
“Mekare didn’t answer. I knew that she was studying them; struggling to see their forms not as a human would see them but as a witch would see them, to let the quiet and the stillness collect around them, so that she might observe the tiny imperceptible aspects of this which eluded regular gaze. Into a trance she fell as she looked at them and listened. And when she spoke her voice was flat, dull:
“ ‘It is working on your body; it is working and working as fire works on the wood it consumes; as worms work on the carcass of an animal. It is working and working and its work is inevitable; it is the continuance of the fusion which has taken place; that is why the sun hurts it, for it is using all of its energy to do what it must do; and it cannot endure the sun’s heat coming down upon it.’
“ ‘Or the bright light of a torch even,’ the King sighed.
“ ‘At times not even a candle flame,’ said the Queen.
“ ‘Yes,’ Mekare said, shaking off the trance finally. ‘And you are dead,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Yet you are alive! If the wounds healed as you say they did; if you brought the King back as you say you did, why, you may have vanquished death. That is, if you do not go into the burning rays of the sun.’
“ ‘No, this cannot continue!’ the King said. ‘The thirst, you don’t know how terrible is the thirst.’
“But the Queen only smiled bitterly again. ‘These are not living bodies now. These are hosts for this demon.’ Her lip trembled as she looked at us. ‘Either that or we are truly gods!’
“ ‘Answer us, witches,’ said the King. ‘Could it be that we are divine beings now, blessed with gifts that only gods share?’ He smiled as he said it; he so wanted to believe it. ‘Could it not be that when your demon sought to destroy us, our gods intervened?’
“An evil light shone in the Queen’s eye. How she loved this idea, but she didn’t believe it … not really.
“Mekare looked at me. She wanted me to go forward and to touch them as she had done. She wanted me to look at them as she had done. There was something further that she wanted to say, yet she was not sure of it. And in truth, I had slightly stronger powers of the in
stinctive nature, though less of a gift for words than she.
“I went forward; I touched their white skin, though it repelled me as they repelled me for all that they had done to our people and us. I touched them and then withdrew and gazed at them; and I saw the work of which Mekare spoke, I could even hear it, the tireless churning of the spirit within. I stilled my mind; I cleared it utterly of all preconception or fear and then as the calmness of the trance deepened in me, I allowed myself to speak.
“ ‘It wants more humans,’ I said. I looked at Mekare. This was what she had suspected.
“ ‘We offer to it all we can!’ the Queen gasped. And the blush of shame came again, extraordinary in its brightness to her pale cheeks. And the King’s face colored also. And I understood then, as did Mekare, that when they drank the blood they felt ecstasy. Never had they known such pleasure, not in their beds, not at the banquet table, not when drunk with beer or wine. That was the source of the shame. It hadn’t been the killing; it had been the monstrous feeding. It had been the pleasure. Ah, these two were such a pair.
“But they had misunderstood me. ‘No,’ I explained. ‘It wants more like you. It wants to go in and make blood drinkers of others as it did with the King; it is too immense to be contained within two small bodies. The thirst will become bearable only when you make others, for they will share the burden of it with you.’
“ ‘No!’ the Queen screamed. ‘That is unthinkable.’
“ ‘Surely it cannot be so simple!’ the King declared. ‘Why, we were both made at one and the same terrible instant, when our gods warred with this demon. Conceivably, when our gods warred and won.’
“ ‘I think not,’ I said.
“ ‘You mean to say,’ the Queen asked, ‘that if we nourish others with this blood that they too will be so infected?’ But she was recalling now every detail of the catastrophe. Her husband dying, the heartbeat gone from him, and then the blood trickling into his mouth.