by Anne Rice
"It is what happened," said Seth.
"But the Core Body was dying," said Marius, "when last it was removed. What happens if you remove it while the Core Body lives, heart and brain connected?"
"Nonsense," said Seth. "The thing lives in the brain, and when you remove the brain, the Core Body begins to die."
"Not necessarily...." said Fareed.
"Of course," sighed Marius. He shrugged and made a helpless gesture. "This is beyond my grasp. Utterly beyond my grasp. I simply can't--." He stopped.
I sympathized. I knew almost nothing about the mechanics of what we'd all witnessed when Akasha had been killed. All I knew was that Mekare had devoured her brain and that had been sufficient for Amel to take root inside her.
"The point is that clever as we may be," said Seth, "we are not able to make a machine to sustain Amel, and we are not at all able to imagine an infinitely secure means of sustaining such a machine even if we could build one. We would still be harnessed to the Voice in such a scenario, of course. And the Voice might be constantly on the prowl, so to speak, to find an ally to free it."
"It would be," I said. "And who could blame him? You've been talking about this idea of a machine as if this being weren't sentient, and capable of excruciating pain. Well, he does feel such things. I'm telling you there must be a solution to all this which doesn't involve the hopeless imprisonment of Amel. His imprisonment in Mekare is what led to this! Yes, her injured mind gave him a vacuum in which to come into his own. And I confess I stimulated him when I stimulated Akasha. No doubt of that! But Amel feels and Amel wants and Amel loves."
"I wouldn't call him Amel," said Marius. "That is far too personal. So far he is the Voice."
"I called him the Voice when I didn't know who he was," I objected. "And others who described him as the Voice didn't know who he was."
"We still don't really know who he is," said Marius.
"So what are you saying, Lestat?" asked Armand in that subtle tone of his. "You are saying this spirit, Amel, is good? Lestat, all we ever learned of it from the twins was that it was evil."
"Not so," I said. "That is not really what the twins told us at all. Besides why would it be inherently either good or evil? And what the twins described was a playful, boasting spirit that loved Mekare and sought to punish Akasha for ever harming her, and somehow this spirit went into Akasha's body and became one with her, one with the one he hated. And now six thousand years later, he finds himself restored to the body of the one he loved, and she's dead to him, dead to everything."
"Ah, that is a beautiful story," said Pandora under her breath.
"But that doesn't make him good!" said Armand.
"And that doesn't make him evil either," I said. "When Maharet told us these old tales she made it clear: good spirits were those who did the bidding of witches; bad ones did mischief. That's a very primitive and near-useless definition of evil or good."
I was suddenly aware of Benji gesturing to Armand, asking him to be quiet, and Louis also. And I saw that Marius was making a similar gesture with his hands low to the table, as if to say, Be quiet. And no sooner had I picked up on this than Armand picked up on it.
I thought for a moment, pressing my fingers together right under my eyes. Then I said, "Look, I'm not speaking for the Voice's benefit. I'm not trying to trick him by praising his sensibilities or his growth or his capacity to love others. I'm saying this because I believe it. The Voice can tell us things no other entity in this world can, and that includes perhaps other spirits who are among us--." I glanced knowingly at Sevraine. I was speaking now of Gremt. "Entities that aren't really confiding in us! Or helping us. Such spirits may be so angry at Amel, so against him, so inveterately his enemy from the time before time that they can't be counted on right now to help us."
"We don't know that," said Sevraine. "We only know they will not help. You're speaking of powerful spirits who may in time help us but for now are waiting, waiting to see what we aim to do."
"No, I would not count out those spirits," said Pandora suddenly. "They may help us yet."
"Precisely," said Sevraine.
At once everyone was in a bit of an uproar. But it was plain many at the table knew what we were talking about and many did not. Benji did not. Neither did Louis or Armand, but Marius knew and so did Pandora. And even the flashy and dapper Everard knew.
"The Talamasca will not help us yet," said Marius. "But they are with us in this."
"The Talamasca's made up of spirits?" demanded Benji. "Since when did that come to be known!"
Quickly, Marius told him to be quiet, that it would all be explored.
And then I held up my hands for silence. I fully expected to be ignored, but the exact opposite happened.
"My point is simply that this Amel is a spirit of immense knowledge and secrets and he happens to be our spirit!" I waited. "Don't you see? We cannot keep talking about him as if he were a cheap villain who's broken into our existence simply to inconvenience us and frighten us and bully us and demand things from us. He's the fount of our very life." I leaned forward and rested my hands on the table. "So he kills," I said. "We kill. So he slaughters mercilessly. Who here of my age or older has not done the same? This entity, this being, is at the root of what we are. Whether he has any plan or not, beyond taking possession of Rhoshamandes, he has a destiny! We all do! That's what this crisis has taught me. That's what Benji's incessant urgings have taught me! We are a tribe with a destiny and it's a destiny worth fighting for. And Amel feels what we feel, that he is a being condemned to suffer for reasons he cannot know, a being who wants to love and wants to learn, who wants to see and feel, and he, like us, has a destiny worth fighting for."
Utter silence.
There was almost no movement, except that they were all glancing to one another. Then in a low voice Seth spoke.
"I think," he said, "that Prince Lestat has made an excellent point."
Marius nodded.
"So what you're saying," said Benji, "is that the Voice is a member of the tribe."
I laughed. "Well, yes!"
"And he's evil and we are evil," whispered Armand.
"That's not so!" said Benji. "We are not evil. You will never understand that. Never."
A change came over Seth. It was sudden. He rose to his feet and so did Sevraine and also Gregory.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Rhoshamandes. He's coming," said Seth. "He's drawing near."
"He's overhead, directly," said Gregory.
Marius rose to his feet with them.
I stood there with my arms folded, listening. I glanced over my shoulder at Rose, who lay in uneasy sleep under her blanket. I looked at Louis who was watching me intently.
But anyone could hear it now, hear its footsteps, and plainly they all did except for Rose, who slept.
He, this being with his mind closed shut like a vault, was walking with intentionally audible steps down an iron staircase somewhere, likely from a portal on the roof, and into the hallway beyond the entrance to the ballroom.
Slowly he came into a view, a startlingly good-looking young man in face and form but a blood drinker of five thousand years most certainly. He had dark brown hair and mild, very open grayish-blue eyes, and he was dressed in an impressive military jacket, black velvet, forest-green trim, very flattering to his tall well-made frame, and he walked right up to the foot of the table.
"Rhoshamandes," he said. There was a flicker of hesitation in his face. Then he bowed to the assembly. And with nods, he gave his greetings, "Sevraine, my dearest. And Gregory, Nebamun, my old friend, and my darlings, Allesandra, Eleni, Eugenie. And Notker, my beloved Notker. And Everard, my dearest Everard. And to all of you, my salutations. And to you, Prince Lestat, I am at your service, so to speak, as long as we can come to an agreement. Your son is as yet unharmed."
A vampire, a male who was part of Notker's group, rose now and fetched a chair from against the wall and brought it to the table.
"It was never my wish to harm Maharet," he said. "And I wish with all my heart and soul I'd found some way to avoid it. I did it because she meant to exterminate us all. I swear to you this is true. And I killed Khayman because I thought when he came to grasp what I'd done, he'd seek to punish me for it."
She stared straight forward, her eyes dull and red, and gazing off as if she hadn't heard. She didn't move. David did not look up at Rhoshamandes either.
Rhoshamandes sighed. And when he did that a rather casual and cavalier expression passed over his handsome features, a rather dismissive expression. It was only there for a second, but I caught it and was startled by it, startled by the hardness of it in contrast to these elegant and sensitive words.
He turned and went back to the foot of the table, so to speak, and sat down in the chair that had been provided for him.
"You know what I want," he said. He addressed me. "You know what Amel wants. You know you, Lestat, you know that your son is with Benedict." He reached into his pocket and held up a shining iPhone for all to see and then placed it before him on the table. "I press the button here and Benedict kills Viktor." He paused, his eyes sweeping the table up and down and then settling on me. "But that does not have to happen, does it? And of course I have Mekare in a safe place, as you no doubt have surmised."
I said nothing. With the power of his mind, he might send a blast from that phone, I figured. But did he know that? I certainly didn't know it for certain. I hated him. I loathed the very sight of him.
"Need I remind you that if anything happens to me," he went on, "the Voice will incite Benedict to immediately kill your son, and you may never find out the location of Mekare."
The others stared at him in cold silence.
24
Lestat
He Who Cuts the Knot
I TRIED TO PENETRATE the creature's mind, trying to pick up the faintest image from it that might indicate precisely where Viktor was, and where Mekare was. And I knew surely that every other blood drinker at the table was doing this. Nothing. And whether the Voice was inside this being right now, looking through his eyes at me and at all of us, I couldn't know.
"I can explain to you simply enough," said Rhoshamandes, "what I want. The Voice wishes to come into me. I am loath to attempt this on my own. I feel I need the assistance of others here, most particularly Fareed, this vampire doctor. I need his help."
Fareed said nothing.
"If we agree to proceed, I'll take Fareed with me now, and when the deed is done, when Mekare is mercifully freed from this Earth, and the Voice is in me, I will return Fareed and Viktor unharmed. I will then possess the Sacred Core. And I will become the leader, so to speak, of this tribe." He smiled coldly as he looked at Benji. "I assure you, I'm neither despotic nor obsessively interested in the conduct of blood drinkers. Like many a being who rises to power, I rise not because I want power, but because I don't intend to be governed by anyone else."
He was about to go on when Seth gestured for his attention. "Have you no hesitation," he said, "about living with this Voice inside you night after night for the rest of your immortal journey in this world?"
Rhoshamandes didn't immediately answer. Indeed his face went blank and became a bit rigid, a bit grim. He stared at the shiny little mobile phone in front of him and then he looked again at me and then at Seth.
"I am committed now to doing what the Voice wants," he said. "The Voice wants to be freed from Mekare. The Voice can only temporarily possess any one of us at any given time, and the Voice does not see clearly or hear clearly through us when it possesses us. And in Mekare it is trapped in an instrument so damaged and blunted, so destroyed through isolation and privation, that it cannot hear or see at all."
"Yes," said Fareed quietly. "We all know this. We're well aware of what the Voice is experiencing now. But Seth's question was for you. How are you going to survive with the Voice inside you, night after--?"
"Yes, well, I will!" came the answer, emphatically and impatiently. Rhoshamandes flushed. "Do you think I have a choice?" he said. Then he drew back gesturing for silence. The Voice was talking to him, no doubt.
I was trying to conceal my thoughts completely, which meant leaving them in an inchoate state as best as I could, but clearly this creature was miserable, I could see it, miserable and conflicted, and his pale eyes, fixing on me again, couldn't express anything but a deep frustration that bordered on pain.
"This must be followed to the finish," he said now. "Fareed, I must ask you to come with me."
"And what happens," asked Sevraine suddenly, "when the Voice tires of being in your body, Rhoshamandes, and decides it wants to be transferred to another?"
"Well, very likely that is never going to happen!" Rhoshamandes flashed furiously, "because the Voice has things to learn in my body, a world to see as he's never seen it before. This thing, this, this Voice ..." He was stammering now in frustration. "This Voice has only just come to consciousness."
"Yes, and it wants a better host body," said Seth in a strong cold tone. "And it's chosen you, a splendid male specimen, but once you take it into yourself you do realize it might just drive you stark raving mad."
"We're wasting time," said Rhoshamandes. "Don't you understand?"
"What? That you're a pawn or a slave of this thing?" Seth was facing him and I couldn't see his face except in semiprofile, but his tone was withering as before.
Rhoshamandes sat back in the chair and put up his hands. He stared at the phone again.
Suddenly Benji slid out of his place at my right and silently hurried down the length of the table until he stood at Rhoshamandes's left and then he stared down at the phone.
"You touch it, and the boy dies!" said Rhoshamandes. He was now full of rage. His eyes were blazing as he glared at Benji, and his mouth was contorted, his lips pressed together and then released in a vicious sneer. "As I said, one errant signal from that phone and Benedict kills Viktor--."
"And when that happens," said Sevraine, "we destroy you, don't we, in the most painful way because you no longer have any bargaining power whatsoever. What makes you think you can get what you want here?"
"I warn you!" He put up his right hand. Right, I was noticing. He'd taken out the phone with his right hand. Right-handed. "This will happen as the Voice has decreed."
Marius cleared his throat and sat forward, hands clasped on the table. "The Voice is young to govern this tribe. And I think if you have the Sacred Core within you, you will expose yourself to the sun--and more of the younger generations of us will perish, because that's what the Voice wants."
"What of it!" demanded Rhoshamandes.
"What of it?" asked Marius. "All of us here have younger fledglings whom we love! You think I want to sit idly by while you destroy Armand, or Bianca?" He was allowing his own rage to rise. "You think I want to see Benji and Sybelle die?"
"Doesn't matter what you want," said Rhosh. "Do you realize that if you don't respond to this offer within the next few minutes, if I fail to contact Benedict, he'll kill the boy as directed, and I'll withdraw from you--and make no mistake, I will do that so swiftly you'll never catch me, and we will simply have to go over all this again, and again, and again, until the Voice achieves his purpose?"
"That sounds rather cynical to me," said Marius.
"And to me also," said Gregory. This was the first time he'd spoken.
"Don't you realize what you're dealing with!" Rhoshamandes glared at Gregory. "Nebamun," he said, appealing to him by his ancient name. "The Voice hears every word we're saying here. The Voice is here with us. The Voice can direct Benedict to kill the boy--."
"Ah, but will Benedict do this for the Voice," asked Gregory, "without a word from you?"
"I think not," said Allesandra. "I think your gentle Benedict is a poor choice of ally
in this."
"Don't be such a fool!" said Rhoshamandes. He was desperate. "You don't know where Mekare is."
"Small matter, that," said Marius, "since she's safe wherever she is for the moment since you cannot take the Sacred Core from her without help."
"Oh, yes, I can and I will." He stood up. "I can leave here and kill that mortal boy and work the transfer just as it was worked before. Why, I might very well compel Viktor to assist me."
I started to laugh. I couldn't stop myself. I laughed. I just broke down laughing and then bending forward, my left hand on my waist as I laughed, I shot the Mind Gift at the iPhone and brought it right to me at my end of the table.
"Don't you dare touch it!" Rhoshamandes roared. I knew the volume of his voice was hurting Rose, had to be hurting her, and could be heard out there on the street by any of the young who might be lingering about.
I laughed harder. I just couldn't stop it. I really didn't want to be laughing like this, but I couldn't stop.
I snatched up the phone and shoved it in my pocket, and using the seat of the chair beside me as a step, I mounted the table, and laughing uncontrollably I started to walk down the length of it towards him.
"Oh, Voice," I said through fits of laughter. "You are such a precocious child! However did you think this stupid plan would work!"
The Voice came into my head in a fury. "I'll destroy your son!" he cried. "You will not block me in this."
"Yes, yes," I said, laughing, taking one stride after another on the gilded blocks of the table. "I know. I have heard your threats before, haven't I? Don't you realize that I am the only one here who actually loves you?"
I had reached the end and suddenly sat down on the edge of the table to one side of Rhoshamandes, who was glaring at me now in fury.
I snatched my ax from inside my coat with my right hand, as with my left I grabbed Rhoshamandes's left forearm, and I brought the ax down with a loud crash on his left wrist. In a tenth of a second it was done. The crescent blade flashed beautifully in the light.