by Anne Rice
He shuddered. He didn't want to think of that. Best never to love another. Best to forget instantly those who winked out as if they'd never existed. Best to live for the pleasures of each night as they came.
But what if it were a time now for them all to come together, to be the tribe that Benji believed them to be, to approach others, old and young, without rage or fear?
Rhoshamandes had laughed at the very idea of the Children of Satan, and their sanctimonious ways. He used to say, "I was in the Blood before their god was even born."
Everard didn't want to think too much about all that either. Let it go. And never remember the satanic covens and their Sabbats. Forget forever those horrid hymns offered to the Prince of Darkness.
Ah, what if it were possible to come together, and worship not a Prince of Darkness but a prince of us?
He opened his iPhone and tapped the screen for the app that connected him directly to Benji's broadcast. The broadcast should be in full swing now in America.
Two hours before dawn.
He was dozing in his favorite leather chair, half dreaming.
Benji was still talking very low through the Bose speaker dock in which Everard had deposited his iPhone. But he was not hearing this.
The dream: Back in Rhoshamandes's castle in that big hollow hall with the fire blazing and Benedict, handsome Benedict with the pretty face, begging to make a vampire of the monk known as Notker the Wise, a creature of immense talent who wrote music night and day as one possessed, songs, motets, chants, and canticles. And Rhoshamandes considering it, nodding and moving his chess pieces about, and saying, "But you blood drinkers brought over from the Christian god, I simply do not know."
"Oh, but, Master, the only god Notker worships is music. Master, would that he could play his music forever."
"Shave off that monkly crown of hair from him first," Rhoshamandes had said, "and then you bring him over. Your blood, not my blood. But I will not have a tonsured blood drinker."
Benedict laughed. It was no secret that Rhoshamandes had locked Benedict up for months to allow his "monkly" hair to grow back all over his pretty head before he'd given him the Dark Blood, and Benedict had prepared for the Dark Gift as if it were a sacrament. Rhoshamandes demanded beauty in his fledglings.
Notker the Wise of Prum was famously beautiful.
A noise awakened Everard.
It drew him abruptly back from that familiar old hall with its soaring beams and stone pavers.
He heard the sharp strike of a match. Flare of flames against his eyelids. There were no matches in this house! He used the Fire Gift to light his fires.
He shot out of the leather easy chair and found himself facing two wild-eyed and disheveled young blood drinkers--a male and a female in the typical vagabond dress of denim and leather. They were setting fire to the draperies in this room.
"Burn, you devil, burn!" shouted the male in Italian.
With a roar, Everard hurled the female through the window, shattering the glass, and yanked down the burning drapery and threw it over the male as he dragged him roughly through the opening and out into the dark garden.
Both were cursing and snarling at him. The male rolled out from under the heap of smoldering velvet with a knife in his hand and ran at Everard.
Burn.
Everard collected the Fire Gift with all his strength in the center of his forehead, then sent the blast against the fool. Flames shot up out of the boy's body, enveloping his arms and head, and his gasping screams were silenced by the roar of the blaze, the Blood burning as if it were petrol. The female had fled.
But Everard caught her as she mounted the wall, dragging her backwards as he sank his fangs into her throat. She screamed as he tore open the artery, the blood squirting into his mouth, against the back of his mouth, inundating his tongue.
At once the flood of images drugged him, her pounding heart driving them as it drove the blood: the Voice, yes, the Voice telling her to kill, telling them both to kill, lovers made in a filthy back alley in Milan by a scrawny bearded blood drinker who pushed them out to kill and steal, twenty years in the Blood maybe, dying, and then it broke down into bits and pieces of childhood, her white First Communion dress, incense, the crowded Cathedral, "Ave Maria," a mother's smiling face, a dress of checkered cloth, apples on a plate, taste of apples, the inevitable peace. He drank deeper, drawing every last drop he could from her, on and on, till there was nothing and the heart had stopped gasping like an open-mouth fish.
From the garden shed, he took a spade and chopped her head from her body. Then he slurped what blood now oozed from the torn neck tissues, the emptying vessels. Shimmer of consciousness. Ghastly! He dropped her head and brushed his hands clean.
With a gentle blast of the Fire Gift he incinerated her remains, the sightless staring head with the long straggly locks of black hair caught in her white teeth, the limp body.
The smoke died away.
The soft breeze of early fall caressed him and comforted him.
The silent garden glittered with fragments of broken glass on the tender grass. The blood had cleared his head, sharpened his vision, warmed him, and made the dark morning miraculous. Like jewels, this broken glass. Like stars.
He breathed in the scent of the lemon trees. All the night was empty around him. No dirges to be sung for this anonymous pair, these beings who might have survived for a thousand years if only they had not pitted themselves against one they could not hope to vanquish.
"Ah, so Voice," Everard said with contempt. "You won't leave me alone, will you? You haven't hurt me, you contemptible monster. You sent these two to their deaths."
But there was no answer.
With the spade he buried the pair, carefully smoothing down the earth, scraping the clods off the stepping-stones, off the path.
He was shaken. He was disgusted.
But one thing was certain. His gift for making fire was now stronger than ever. He had never actually ever used it against another blood drinker. But this had taught him what he could do if he had to do it.
Small consolation.
Then the Voice sighed. Ah, such a sigh. "That was my intention, Everard," said the Voice. "I told you I wanted you to kill them, the riffraff. And now you have made a start."
Everard made no reply.
He leaned on the handle of the spade and thought.
The Voice had gone.
Quiet the sleeping countryside. Not so much as a car moving on a country road. Only this clean breeze and the glistening leaves of the fruit trees around him, and the white calla lilies glowing against the walls of the villa, the walls of the garden. Fragrance of lilies. Miracle of lilies.
Across the sea, Benji Mahmoud was still talking....
His voice suddenly drove a sword through Everard's heart.
"Elders of the tribe," Benji was appealing. "We need you. Come back to us. Come back to your lost children. Hear my cry on high, a mourning and a bitter weeping, I am Benji weeping for my lost brothers and sisters because they are no more."
11
Gremt Stryker Knollys
IT WAS an old colonial mansion, red with white trim, a sprawling building with deep verandas and peaked roofs, covered with soft fluttering green vines and invisible from the winding road on account of the massive bamboo and mango trees surrounding it. A lovely place with palms swaying ever so gracefully in the breeze. It appeared abandoned but it had never been. Mortal servants maintained it by day.
And this vampire Arjun had been sleeping beneath it for centuries.
Now he was weeping. He sat at the table, his face in his hands.
"In my time I was a prince," he said. He wasn't boasting. He was merely reflecting. "And among the Undead I was a prince for so long. I do not know how I came to this."
"I know all this is true," Gremt said.
The blood drinker was undeniably beautiful, with light golden-brown skin so flawless it appeared unreal now, and large fierce black eyes. He had a wea
lth of jet-black hair worthy of a lion. Made by the wandering blood drinker Pandora in the days of the Chola dynasty of southern India, he had indeed been a prince, and much darker of skin than he was now and just as comely. The Blood had lightened his skin, but not his hair, which was sometimes the case, though no one knew why.
"I have always known who you were," said Gremt. "I knew you when you traveled Europe with Pandora. I beg you, for both of us, tell me simply in your own words what happened."
He withdrew a small white visiting card from his pocket, on which was written his full name in golden script: GREMT STRYKER KNOLLYS. Beneath it was his e-mail address and the numbers of his mobile phone.
But this blood drinker didn't even acknowledge this human gesture. He could not. And Gremt moved the card discreetly to the center of the teak table and put it halfway under the brass base of the small shaded candle that was flickering there, giving a little bit of light to their faces. A soft golden light also came from the open doors along this deep porch.
This was a beautiful place.
It touched Gremt that this battered soul, this creature in such distress, had taken such time to wash the dirt from his shining hair, and that he was clothed now in a long well-fitted and richly jeweled sherwani, and black silk pants, and that his hands were clean and scented with true sandalwood.
"But how could you have known me then?" asked the blood drinker in a plaintive voice. "What are you? You're not human, I know this. You are not human. And you are not what I am. What are you?"
"I am your friend now," said Gremt. "I've always been your friend. I've been watching you for centuries, not just you, but all of you."
Arjun was suspicious, of course, but more than anything he was horrified by what he'd done and he was warming piteously to Gremt's persuasive tone, to the warmth of Gremt's hand on his.
"All I wanted was to sleep," Arjun said. He spoke with the same accent that was familiar in Goa and India to this day, though his command of English was perfect. "I knew I would return. My beloved, Pandora, she knows that I am here. She's always known. I was safe here when the queen Akasha went on her rampage. She didn't find me beneath this house."
"I understand," said Gremt. "Pandora is coming to you."
"How can you know this?" Arjun asked. "Oh, truly I want to believe it. I need her so very much. But how do you know?"
Gremt hesitated. He gestured for Arjun to speak. "Tell me everything."
"Ten years ago, I sat on this veranda with Pandora, and we spoke," said Arjun. "I was still tired. I was not ready to join with her and her beloved friends. I told her I needed the sanctuary of the Earth and what we learn in the Earth, for we do learn when we sleep as if an umbilical cord connects us to the living world above."
"That's true," said Gremt.
"It was never my intention to wake now."
"Yes."
"But this Voice. It spoke to me. I mean it was in my mind at first and it seemed these were my own thoughts, but in my sleep I did not embrace these thoughts."
"Yes."
"And then it had a tone and a vocabulary all its own, this Voice, speaking to me in English sharply, telling me that I wanted to rise, I, Arjun, wanted to rise, to go into Mumbai and wipe them out, the young ones. It seemed so true to me, true! Why did I listen to this? I, who have never wanted trouble with my own kind, who stood my ground patiently centuries ago with Marius, telling him from my soul I would give up my maker to him if that's what he wanted, what she wanted. You understand? I fought my last battles when I was a mortal prince. What is this to me, murdering, massacring, burning young ones?" He hastened to answer his own question. "Is there something in the gentlest of us that longs to destroy? Something that dreams of annihilating other sentient beings?"
"Perhaps there is," said Gremt. "When did you realize that this was not what you wanted?"
"When it was happening!" confessed Arjun. "The buildings were in flames. They were screaming, pleading with me, going down on their knees. And these were not all fledglings, you understand. Some of them had been in the Blood hundreds of years. 'We survived the Queen to perish like this?' That's what they screamed as they put out their arms to me. 'What have we done to you?' But it was only slowly coming clear to me what I had started. It became a battle, their fighting me with the Fire Gift and I overriding their weaker power. It was ... it was ..."
"Pleasurable."
Tears of shame rose in Arjun's eyes. He nodded.
"Ah, you murder a human being," Arjun said, "and you steal a life, yes, and that is unspeakable. You murder a blood drinker and you steal eternity! You steal immortality!"
He laid his head down on his arm.
"What happened in Kolkata?"
"That was not me," he said at once. He sat back in the old rattan peacock chair, the broad woven back creaking against his weight. "I did not do it."
"I believe you," said Gremt.
"But why did I kill these children in Mumbai?"
"The Voice roused you for the purpose. It's done this in other places. It's done it in the Orient. It's doing it in South America. I've suspected from the beginning there was no one blood drinker enacting the Burning."
"But who is the Voice?" asked Arjun.
Gremt grew quiet. "Pandora is coming," he said.
Arjun rose to his feet, almost upsetting the big chair behind him. He looked from right to left, trying to see through the darkness.
When she emerged from the long thick bamboo hedge, he went into her arms, and for a long moment, they held one another, rocking back and forth, and then he broke the grip and covered her face with kisses. She stood very still, allowing this, a slender female with wavy brown hair wearing a long simple hooded cloak and robe, her pale-white hands stroking Arjun's hair, her eyes closed as she savored the moment.
Excitedly he brought her towards the veranda, and into the light coming from the rooms of the bungalow. "Sit here, please, sit here!" he said, bringing her to the teakwood table and the peacock chairs. Then, unable to stop himself, he embraced her again and sobbed silently against her shoulder.
She whispered to him in the tongue they'd shared when she'd wooed and wed him. She consoled him with her kisses.
Gremt had risen to his feet as any gentleman might in the presence of a woman. And this woman, Pandora, took his measure carefully, even as she suffered more kisses and embraces from Arjun. Her eyes were now fixed on him, and she was obviously listening to the beat of Gremt's heart, to the sound of his respiration, as she studied his skin, his eyes, his hair.
What did she see? A tall blue-eyed male with short black wavy hair and Caucasian skin and a face modeled on a Greek statue, a man with broad capable shoulders and slender hands, dressed in a plain long black silk thawb that covered him to his ankles, a garment that might have passed for a priest's cassock in another country. This was the body Gremt had perfected for himself over some fourteen hundred years. It might have fooled any human being on the planet. It could withstand the scrutiny of X-ray machines in modern airports. But it could not fool Pandora. It wasn't biologically human.
She was shocked to the soul, but Gremt knew full well she'd seen beings like him before. Many times. Powerful beings walking around in made-up bodies, so to speak. Indeed she'd seen Gremt many a time, though she had not always known that it was Gremt by any means. And the very first time he had ever seen her, he had been bodiless.
"I am your friend," Gremt said immediately. And he extended his hand to her, though she didn't lift her hand in response.
Arjun was now wiping away his tears with an old linen handkerchief. Carefully, he tucked this back into his pocket.
"I did not mean to do it!" he said frantically. He was imploring her to understand.
And Pandora as if wakened from a spell turned her eyes away from Gremt and back to him.
"I knew you didn't," she said. "I understood this completely."
"What you must think of me!" he persisted, his face stricken with shame.
"Ah
, but it wasn't you at all, was it?" she said at once, taking his hand and then kissing him again and drawing back once more to look at Gremt. "It was a voice, wasn't it?"
"Yes, a voice," he said. "I was telling Gremt. Gremt understands. Gremt is a friend."
Very reluctantly, she sat down as Arjun urged her to do so, and he settled back into his chair to the left of her.
Only then did Gremt take his seat again.
"But you must have believed me guilty," Arjun said to Pandora, "or why else would you have come here to me?"
Pandora was again staring at Gremt. She was far too uncomfortable with the obvious mystery of Gremt to hear what Arjun wanted her to hear.
Gremt turned to Arjun and spoke softly. "Pandora knew because of the pictures, Arjun. When it happened there were witnesses snapping pictures, and those pictures went viral, as they say on the internet. These pictures were infinitely more detailed and clear than telepathic glimpses. These pictures don't fade as memory fades; they will circulate for all time. And in New York, a young blood drinker named Benjamin Mahmoud, made by Marius, posted the pictures on a website. And Pandora saw those pictures."
"Ahhh! Unspeakable disgrace," Arjun said, covering his face with his long fingers. "And so Marius and his children think I am guilty of this. And how many others believe it?"
"No, not so," said Pandora. "We're all coming to understand. Everyone is coming to understand."
"You must. You must know that it was the Voice." He looked helplessly to Gremt for confirmation.
"But Arjun is himself now," said Gremt. "And he is now perfectly capable of resisting the Voice. And the Voice has moved on to some other slumbering blood drinkers."
"Yes, that explains part of it," said Pandora, "but not all of it. Because it is now almost certain that the burnings happening in South America are being done by none other than Khayman."
"Khayman?" said Arjun. "Gentle Khayman? But I thought he had become the consort and guard of the twins now!"
"That he is and has been for a long time," said Gremt. "But Khayman has always been a broken soul, and he is now apparently as susceptible to the Voice as some of the other old ones."
"And Maharet cannot control him?" asked Pandora. There was an edge to her voice. She wanted to talk of all this, wanted to know what Gremt knew, but she wanted most certainly to know more about Gremt, so she spoke with a tone that said, You are a stranger to me.