by Anne Rice
Antoine moved with renewed purpose. I am alive again, he thought. I can die a thousand deaths like any coward and come back to life again. He hunted on the margins as before, struggling for clothes, money, lodgings, a new age flaming into color around him. In a small hotel room, he studied his new Apple computer, determined to master it, soon connecting with the website and radio program of Benji Mahmoud.
"Vampires have been slaughtered in Mumbai," declared Benji. "The reports have been confirmed. It is the same as in Tokyo and Beijing. Havens and sanctuaries burnt to the ground and all who fled immolated in their tracks, only the swiftest and the most fortunate surviving to give us the word, the pictures."
A frantic vampire calling from Hong Kong poured out her fears to Benji.
"I appeal to the old ones," said Benji. "To Mekare, Maharet, Khayman, speak to us. Tell us why these immolations have happened. Is a new Time of Burning begun?"
Caller after caller begged for permission to come to Benji and Louis and Armand for protection.
"No. This is not possible," Benji confessed. "Believe me, the safest place for you is where you are. But avoid known coven houses, or vampire bars and taverns. And if you witness this horrific violence, take shelter. Remember those who strike with the Fire Gift must see you in order to destroy you! Don't flee in the open. If you possibly can, go underground."
Finally after many nights, Antoine broke through. In an anxious whisper he told Benji he'd been made by the great Vampire Lestat himself. "I am a musician!" he pleaded. "Allow me to come to you, I beg you. Confirm for me where you are."
"I wish I could, brother," said Benji, "but alas, I cannot. Don't seek to find me. And be careful. These are dreadful times for our kind."
That night late, Antoine went down in the darkened hotel dining room and he played the piano for the small, weary night staff who stopped only now and then to listen to him as he poured his soul out on the keys.
He would call again, from some other number. He would beg Benji to understand. Antoine wanted to play music like Sybelle played music. Antoine had this gift to offer. Antoine was telling the truth when he spoke of his maker. Benji had to understand.
For two months, Antoine worked on his music nightly, and during that time he read the later books of vampire scripture, the memoirs of Pandora, Marius, and Armand.
Now he knew all about the Bedouin, Benji Mahmoud, and his beloved Sybelle--Benji, a boy of twelve when the great vampire Marius had brought him over, and Sybelle, the eternal gamin who had once played only Beethoven's Appassionata over and over again, but who now went through the repertoire of all the greats Antoine knew and recent composers of whom he had not dreamed.
Deviled and driven by her playing, Antoine strove for perfection, assailing pianos in bars, restaurants, deserted classrooms and auditoriums, piano stores, and even private homes.
He was now composing music of his own again, breaking piano keys in his fervor, breaking strings.
Another terrible Burning took place in Taiwan.
Benji was plainly angry now as he appealed to the elders to shed light on what was happening to the tribe. "Lestat, where are you? Can you not be our champion against these forces of destruction? Or have you become Cain the slayer of your brothers and sisters yourself!"
At last Antoine had the money to purchase a violin of good quality. He went into the countryside to play under the stars. He rushed into Stravinsky and Bartok, whose work he'd learned from recordings. His head teemed with the new dissonance and wailing of modern music. He understood this tonal language, this aesthetic. It spoke for the fear and the pain, the fear that had become terror, the pain that had become the very blood in his veins.
He had to reach Benji and Sybelle.
More than anything it was critical loneliness that drove Antoine. He knew he'd end up in the earth again if he didn't find someone of his own kind to love. He dreamed of making music with Sybelle.
Am I an elder now? Or am I a maverick to be killed on sight?
One night Benji spoke of the hour, and of the weather, confirming surely that he was indeed broadcasting from the northern East Coast. Filling a leather backpack with his violin and his musical compositions, Antoine started north.
Just outside Philadelphia, he encountered another vagrant blood drinker. He almost fled. But the other came to him with open arms--a lean big-boned vampire with straggly hair and huge eyes, pleading with Antoine not to be frightened and not to hurt him, and they came together, all but sobbing in each other's embrace.
The boy's name was Killer and he was little more than a hundred years old. He'd been made, he said, in the very early days of the twentieth century in a backwater town in Texas by a wanderer like himself who charged Killer to bury his ashes after he'd burnt himself up.
"That's the way a lot of them did it in those days," said Killer, "like the way Lestat describes Magnus making him. They pick an heir when they're sick of it all, give us the Dark Blood, and then we have to scatter the ashes when they're gone. But what did I care? I was nineteen. I wanted to be immortal, and the world was big in 1910. You could go anywhere, do anything at all."
In a cheap motel, by the glimmering light of the muted television, as if it were the flicker of a fireplace, they talked for hours.
Killer had survived the long-ago massacre of Akasha the great Queen. He'd made it all the way to San Francisco in 1985 to hear the Vampire Lestat onstage, only to see hundreds of blood drinkers immolated after the concert. He and his companion Davis had been fatally separated, and Killer, sneaking into the slums of San Francisco, had found himself the next night one of a tiny remnant fleeing the city, thankful to be alive. He never saw Davis again.
Davis was a beautiful black vampire, and Killer had loved him. They'd been members of the Fang Gang in those times. They even wore those letters on their leather jackets and they drove Harleys and they never spent more than two nights in any one place. All over, those times.
"The Burning now, it has to happen," Killer told Antoine. "Things can't go on the way they are. I tell you, before Lestat came on the scene in those days, it wasn't like this. There just weren't so many of us, and me and my friends, we roamed the country towns in peace. There were coven houses then, havens like, and vampire bars where anyone could enter, you know, safe refuge, but the Queen wiped all that away. And with it went the last of vampire law and order. And since those times, the tramps and the mavericks have bred everywhere, and group fights group. There's no discipline, no rules. I tried to team up with the young ones in Philadelphia. They were like mad dogs."
"I know that old story," Antoine said, shivering, remembering those flames, those unspeakable flames. "But I have to reach Benji and Sybelle. I have to reach Lestat."
In all these years, Antoine had never told the story of his own life to anyone. He had not even told it to himself. And now, with the lamp of the Vampire Chronicles illuminating his strange journey, he poured it out to Killer unstintingly. He feared derision, but none came.
"He was my friend, Lestat," Antoine confessed. "He told me about his lover, Nicolas, who had been a violinist. He said he couldn't speak his heart to his little family, to Louis or Claudia, that they would laugh at him. So he spoke his heart only to me."
"You go to New York, my friend, and Armand will burn you to cinders," said Killer. "Oh, not Benji or Sybelle, no, and maybe not even Louis ... but Armand will do it and they won't bat an eye. And they can do it too. They have Marius's blood in their veins, those two. Even Louis's powerful now, got the blood of the older ones in him. But Armand is the one who kills. There are eight million people in Manhattan and four members of the Undead. I warn you, Antoine, they won't listen to you. They won't care that Lestat made you. Least I don't think they will. Hell, you won't even have a chance to tell them. Armand will hear you coming. Then he'll kill you on sight. You do know they have to see you to burn you up, don't you? They can't do it unless they can see you. But Armand will hunt you down and you won't be able to hide."
"But I have to go," Antoine said. He burst into tears. He wrapped his arms tight around himself and rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed. His long black hair fell down over his face. "I have to get back to Lestat. I have to. And if anyone can help me find him, it's Louis, isn't it?"
"Hell, man," said Killer. "Don't you get it? Everybody's looking for Lestat. And these Burnings are happening now. And they're moving west. No one's seen hide nor hair of Lestat in the last two years, man. And the last sighting in Paris could have been bogus. There's lots of swaggering dudes walking around pretending to be Lestat. I was down in New Orleans last year and there were so many fake Lestats swaggering around in pirate shirts and cheap boots, you wouldn't believe it. The place is overrun. They drove me out of the city after one night."
"I can't go on alone," said Antoine. "I have to reach them. I have to play my violin for Sybelle. I have to be part of them."
"Look, old buddy," said Killer, softened and sympathetic and putting his arm around Antoine. "Why don't you just come out west with me? We both rode out the last Burning, didn't we? We'll ride this one out too."
Antoine couldn't answer. He was in such pain. He saw the pain in bright explosive colors in his mind as he had when he was so badly burned years and years ago. Red and yellow and orange was this pain. He took up the violin and began to play it, softly, as softly as you can play a violin, and he let it mourn with him for all he'd ever been or might have been and then sing of his hopes and dreams.
The next night after they'd hunted the country roads, he told Killer of his loneliness over the centuries, of how he'd grown to love mortals the way Lestat had once loved him, and how he'd pulled away from them finally, always afraid that he couldn't make another, as Lestat had made him. Lestat had been badly wounded when he'd made Antoine. It hadn't been easy. It was nothing like the majestic procedure of the Dark Trick described in the pages of Marius's memoir, Blood and Gold. Marius made it sound like the giving of a sacrament when he'd made Armand in the 1500s in those Renaissance rooms in Venice, filled with Marius's paintings. It had been nothing like that at all.
"Well, I can tell you as a fact," said Killer, "that lately it's not been working at all. Right before these massacres started, they were all talking about it, how hard it was to bring somebody over. It was like the Blood was played out. Too many in the Blood. Think about it. The power comes from the Mother, from that demon, Amel, who entered into Akasha and then passed into Mekare, the Queen of the Damned. Well, maybe Amel really is an invisible creature with tentacles just like Mekare once said, and those tentacles have stretched just as far as they can. They just can't stretch forever."
Killer sighed. Antoine looked away. He was obsessed.
"I'm going to tell you something horrible I hate to tell anybody," said Killer. "Last two times I tried to bring somebody over, it flat-out failed. Now it was never like that before, I can tell you." Killer shook his head. "I tried to bring over the most beautiful little girl I ever saw in one of those towns back there, and it just did not work. It just didn't work. Come dawn, I did the only thing I could do--chop off her head and bury her, and I'd promised her eternal life and I had to do that. She was a zombie thing, and she couldn't even talk and her heart wasn't beating, but she wasn't dead."
Antoine shuddered. He'd never had the courage to try. But if this was true, if he did not have the slightest hope of ever ending this loneliness by making another, well, then, that was all the more reason to press on.
Killer laughed under his breath. "It used to seem so easy," he said, "back when I was making members of the old Fang Gang, but now the filth and the rabble and the trash are everywhere, and even if you make them, they'll turn on you, rob you, betray you, and take off with someone else. I tell you these massacres have to come. They have to. There's bad dudes selling the Blood. Can you believe? Selling the Blood. Least they were. I expect they're played out too and running for their lives now like everybody else."
Again Killer begged Antoine to stay with him.
"For all we know, Armand and Louis and Lestat are all in this together," Killer said. "Maybe they're all doing it, the big heroes of the Vampire Chronicles. But these things have to happen, like I said. I know this is what Benji thinks, but he won't say it. He can't. But this is worse than before. Can you hear them, the voices? There was a Burning last night in Kathmandu. Think about it, man. It's going to move across India, whoever's doing it, and then into the Middle East. It's worse than the last time. It's being more thorough. I can sense it. I remember. I know."
Tearfully, they parted a short way southeast of New York. Killer wouldn't go any farther. Benji's broadcast the night before had confirmed Killer's worst fears. There had been no direct witnesses to the Burning when it hit Kolkata. Vampires for hundreds of miles caught images of the immolation. They were fleeing west.
"All right, if you're determined to go through with this," said Killer. "I'll tell you what I know. Armand and the others live in a mansion on the Upper East Side half a block from Central Park. It's three townhouses linked together, and each one's got a door to the street. There are little Greek columns on each little porch and big limbed trees growing out front surrounded by little skirts of iron.
"These townhouses are maybe five stories high and they've got these fancy little iron balconies up high on the windows that aren't balconies at all."
"I know what you mean," said Antoine gratefully. He was picking up the images from Killer's mind, but it seemed rude to say so.
"It's gorgeous inside," said Killer, "like a palace, and they leave all those windows open on nights like this, you know, and they'll see you long before you ever see them. They could be anywhere up in those high windows looking out long before you even get close. The mansion's got a name, Trinity Gate. And a lot of blood drinkers can tell you, it's the gate of death to us if we go there. And remember, my friend, it's Armand who's the killer. Back years ago, when Lestat was down and out in New Orleans--after he'd met Memnoch the Devil--it was Armand who kept the trash away from him. Lestat was sleeping kind of in this chapel in this old convent...."
"I remember from the books," said Antoine.
"Yeah, well, it was Armand who cleared the town. Antoine, please don't go there. He'll blast you right off the face of the Earth."
"I have to go," said Antoine. How could he ever explain to this simple survivor that existence was unbearable to him as it was? Even this blood drinker's company had not been enough to fill the gnawing emptiness inside him.
They embraced before parting. Killer repeated that he was headed out to California. If the massacres were moving west, well, he'd move west too. He'd heard tell of a great vampire physician who lived in Southern California, an immortal named Fareed, who actually studied the Dark Blood under microscopes and sometimes sheltered roamers like Killer, if they would donate some tissue and some blood for experiments.
Fareed had been made with ancient blood by a vampire named Seth, who was almost as old as the Mother. And nobody could hurt Seth or Fareed. Well, Killer was going to look for that doctor in California because he figured that was his only hope. He begged Antoine to change his mind and come with him. But Antoine could not.
Antoine wept afterwards. Alone again. And as he lay down to sleep that morning, he heard the voices wailing, powerful ones crying out, conveying the word. The Burning was annihilating the vampires of India. A great sense of doom filled Antoine. When he thought of all the years he'd roamed and slept in the earth he felt he had wasted the gift Lestat gave him. Waste. He had never thought of it as precious. It had been only a new kind of suffering.
But that's not what it was for Benji Mahmoud. "We are a tribe and we should think like one," Benji said often. "Why should Hell have dominion over us?"
Antoine was bound and determined to continue. He had a plan. He wouldn't try to speak to these powerful Manhattan vampires. He would let his music speak for him. Hadn't he done that all his long life?
Outside the city--before
he stole a car to drive into Manhattan--he had his black hair cut and trimmed modern style by a precious little girl in a salon full of perfume and lighted candles, and then outfitted himself in a fine Armani suit of black wool with a Hugo Boss shirt and a gleaming Versace silk tie. Even his shoes were fancy, made of Italian leather, and he carefully rubbed his white skin with oil and clean paper ash to make himself look less luminescent in the bright city lights. If all these blandishments gave them a moment's pause he would use that pause to make the violin sing.
At last he was on foot on Fifth Avenue, having ditched the stolen car on a side street, when he heard the wild unmistakable music of Sybelle. And there, yes, was the great townhouse complex described by Killer, Trinity Gate, facing downtown with its many warmly lighted windows, and he could all but hear the powerful heart of Armand.
As he dropped the violin case at his feet, and tuned his instrument rapidly, Sybelle broke off the long turbulent piece she'd been playing and suddenly moved into the soft beautiful Chopin etude "Tristesse."
Crossing Fifth Avenue, he moved towards the doors of the mansion, already playing with her, following her as he glided into the soft sweet unmistakably sad melody of the etude and racing with her into the more violent phrasing. He heard her hesitate and then her playing moved on, slowly again, and his violin sang with it, weaving high above her. The tears rolled down Antoine's cheeks; he couldn't stop them, though he knew they would be tinged with blood.
On and on he went with her, moving beneath her into the deepest and darkest notes he could make on the G string.
She stopped.
Silence. He thought he would collapse. In a blur he saw mortals gathered around him, watching him, and suddenly he brought down his bow, ripping away from the gentle caressing music of Chopin into the strong full melodies of Bartok's Concerto for Violin, playing both orchestra lines and the violin lines in a torrent of wild, dissonant agonized notes.