Queen of the Damned

by Anne Rice

  Ah, but she lives, Khayman thought. She lives, and if she lives then in a real way, they both live, the red-haired sisters!

  Khayman studied the creature even more intently, probing even deeper. But all he caught now was the fierce protectiveness. Rescue Jesse, not merely from the danger of the Mother but from this place altogether, where Jesse’s eyes would see what no one could ever explain away.

  And how he loathed the Mother, this tall, fair being with the posture of a warrior and a priest in one. He loathed that the Mother had disrupted the serenity of his timeless and melancholy existence; loathed that his sad, sweet love for this woman, Jessica, exacerbated the alarm he felt for himself. He knew the extent of the destruction too, that every blood drinker from one end of this continent to the other had been destroyed, save for a precious few, most of whom were under this roof, never dreaming of the fate that threatened them.

  He knew as well of the dreams of the twins, but he did not understand them. After all, two redheaded sisters he had never known; only one red-haired beauty ruled his life. And once again Khayman saw Maharet’s face, a vagrant image of softened weary human eyes peering from a porcelain mask: Mael, do not ask me anything more. But do as I tell you.

  Silence. The blood drinker was aware of the surveillance suddenly. With a little jerk of his head he looked around the hall, trying to spot the intruder.

  The name had done it, as names so often do. The creature had felt himself known, recognized. And Khayman had recognized the name at once, connecting it with the Mael of Lestat’s pages. Undoubtedly they were one and the same—this was the Druid priest who had lured Marius into the sacred grove where the blood god had made him one of its own, and sent him off to Egypt to find the Mother and the Father.

  Yes, this was the same Mael. And the creature felt himself recognized and hated it.

  After the initial spasm of rage, all thought and emotion vanished. A rather dizzying display of strength, Khayman conceded. He relaxed in the chair. But the creature couldn’t find him. Two dozen other white faces he picked out of the crowd, but not Khayman.

  Intrepid Jessica had meantime reached her destination. Ducking low, she’d slipped through the heavy-muscled motorcycle riders who claimed the space before the stage as their own, and had risen to take hold of the lip of the wooden platform.

  Flash of her silver bracelet in the light. And that might as well have been a tiny dagger to the mental shield of Mael, because his love and his thoughts were wholly visible again for one fluid instant.

  This one is going to die, too, if he doesn’t become wise, Khayman thought. He’d been schooled by Maharet, no doubt, and perhaps nourished by her powerful blood; yet his heart was undisciplined, and his temper beyond his control, it was obvious.

  Then some feet behind Jesse, in the swirling color and noise, Khayman spied another intriguing figure, much younger, yet almost as powerful in his own fashion as the Gaul, Mael.

  Khayman sought for the name, but the creature’s mind was a perfect blank; not so much as a glimmer of personality escaped from it. A boy he’d been when he died, with straight dark auburn hair, and eyes a little too big for his face. But it was easy, suddenly, to filch the being’s name from Daniel, his newborn fledgling who stood beside him. Armand. And the fledgling, Daniel, was scarcely dead. All the tiny molecules of his body were dancing with the demon’s invisible chemistry.

  Armand immediately attracted Khayman. Surely he was the same Armand of whom Louis and Lestat had both written—the immortal with the form of a youth. And this meant that he was no more than five hundred years old, yet he veiled himself completely. Shrewd, cold he seemed, yet without flair—a stance that required no room in which to display itself. And now, sensing infallibly that he was watched, he turned his large soft brown eyes upward and fixed instantly upon the remote figure of Khayman.

  “No harm meant to you or your young one,” Khayman whispered, so that his lips might shape and control the thoughts. “No friend to the Mother.”

  Armand heard but gave no answer. Whatever terror he felt at the sight of one so old, he masked completely. One would have thought he was looking at the wall behind Khayman’s head, at the steady stream of laughing and shouting children who poured down the steps from the topmost doorways.

  And, quite inevitably, this oddly beguiling little five-hundred-year-old being fixed his eyes upon Mael as the gaunt one felt another irresistible surge of concern for his fragile Jesse.

  Khayman understood this being, Armand. He felt he understood him and liked him completely. As their eyes met again, all that had been written of this creature in the two little histories was informed and balanced by the creature’s innate simplicity. The loneliness which Khayman had felt in Athens was now very strong.

  “Not unlike my own simple soul,” Khayman whispered. “You’re lost in all this because you know the terrain too well. And that no matter how far you walk, you come again to the same mountains, the same valley.”

  No response. Of course. Khayman shrugged and smiled. To this one he’d give anything that he could; and guilelessly, he let Armand know it.

  Now the question was, how to help them, these two that might have some hope of sleeping the immortal sleep until another sunset. And most important of all, how to reach Maharet, to whom the fierce and distrusting Mael was unstintingly devoted.

  To Armand, Khayman said with the slightest movement of his lips: “No friend of the Mother. I told you. And keep with the mortal crowd. She’ll pick you out when you step apart. It’s that simple.”

  Armand’s face registered no change. Beside him, the fledgling Daniel was happy, glorying in the pageant that surrounded him. He knew no fear, no plans or dreams. And why not? He had this extremely powerful creature to take care of him. He was a damn sight luckier than the rest.

  Khayman rose to his feet. It was the loneliness as much as anything else. He would be near to one of these two, Armand or Mael. That’s what he had wanted in Athens when all this glorious remembering and knowing had begun. To be near another like himself. To speak, to touch . . . something.

  He moved along the top aisle of the hall, which circled the entire room, save for a margin at the far end behind the stage which belonged to the giant video screen.

  He moved with slow human grace, careful not to crush the mortals who pushed against him. And also he wanted this slow progress because he must give Mael the opportunity to see him.

  He knew instinctively that if he snuck up on this proud and quarrelsome thing, the insult would never be borne. And so he proceeded, only picking up his pace when he realized Mael was now aware of his approach.

  Mael couldn’t hide his fear as Armand could. Mael had never seen a blood drinker of Khayman’s age save for Maharet; he was gazing at a potential enemy. Khayman sent the same warm greeting he had sent to Armand—Armand who watched—but nothing in the old warrior’s stance changed.

  The auditorium was now full and locked; outside children screamed and beat upon the doors. Khayman heard the whine and belch of the police radios.

  The Vampire Lestat and his cohorts stood spying upon the hall through the holes in a great serge curtain.

  Lestat embraced his companion Louis, and they kissed on the mouth, as the mortal musicians put their arms around both of them.

  Khayman paused to feel the passion of the crowd, the very air charged with it.

  Jessica had rested her arms on the edge of the platform. She had rested her chin upon the back of her hands. The men behind her, hulking creatures clothed in shiny black leather, shoved her brutally, out of carelessness and drunken exuberance, but they couldn’t dislodge her.

  Neither could Mael, should he make the attempt.

  And something else came clear to Khayman suddenly, as he looked down at her. It was the single word Talamasca. This woman belonged to them; she was part of the order.

  Not possible, he thought again, then laughed silently at his own foolish innocence. This was a night of shocks, was it
not? Yet it seemed quite incredible that the Talamasca should have survived from the time he had known it centuries before, when he had played with its members and tormented them, and then turned his back on them out of pity for their fatal combination of innocence and ignorance.

  Ah, memory was too ghastly a thing. Let his past lives slip into oblivion! He could see the faces of those vagabonds, those secular monks of the Talamasca who had so clumsily pursued him across Europe, recording glimpses of him in great leather-bound books, their quill pens scratching late into the night. Benjamin had been his name in that brief respite of consciousness, and Benjamin the Devil they had labeled him in their fancy Latin script, sending off crackling parchment epistles with big sloppy wax seals to their superiors in Amsterdam.

  It had been a game to him, to steal their letters and add his notes to them; to frighten them; to crawl out from under their beds in the night and grab them by the throats and shake them; it had been fun; and what was not? When the fun stopped, he’d always lost his memory again.

  But he had loved them; not exorcists they, or witch-hunting priests, or sorcerers who hoped to chain and control his power. It had even occurred to him once that when it came time to sleep, he would choose the vaults beneath their moldy Motherhouse. For all their meddlesome curiosity, they would never have betrayed him.

  And now to think that the order had survived, with the tenacity of the Church of Rome, and this pretty mortal woman with the shining bracelet on her arm, beloved of Maharet and Mael, was one of their special breed. No wonder she had fought her way to the front ranks, as if to the bottom step of the altar.

  Khayman drew closer to Mael, but he stopped short of him by several feet, the crowd passing ceaselessly in front of them. This he did out of respect for Mael’s apprehension, and the shame the creature felt for being afraid. It was Mael who approached and stood at Khayman’s side.

  The restless crowd passed them as if they were the wall itself. Mael leant close to Khayman, which in its own way was a greeting, an offering of trust. He looked out over the hall, where no empty seat was visible, and the main floor was a mosaic of flashing colors and glistening hair and tiny upthrust fists. Then he reached out and touched Khayman as if he couldn’t prevent himself from doing it. With his fingertips he touched the back of, Khayman’s left hand. And Khayman remained still to allow this little exploration.

  How many times had Khayman seen such a gesture between immortals, the young one verifying for himself the texture and hardness of the elder’s flesh. Hadn’t some Christian saint slipped his hand in Christ’s wounds because the sight of them had not been sufficient? More mundane comparisons made Khayman smile. It was like two fierce dogs tentatively examining each other.

  Far below, Armand remained impassive as he kept his eyes upon the two figures. Surely he saw Mael’s sudden disdainful glance, but he did not acknowledge it.

  Khayman turned and embraced Mael, and smiled at him. But this merely frightened Mael, and Khayman felt the disappointment heavily. Politely, he stepped away. For a moment he was painfully confused. He stared down at Armand. Beautiful Armand who met his gaze with utter passivity. But it was time to say now what he’d come to say.

  “You must make your shield stronger, my friend,” he explained to Mael gently. “Don’t let your love for that girl expose you. The girl will be perfectly safe from our Queen if you curb your thoughts of the girl’s origins and her protector. That name is anathema to the Queen. It always has been.”

  “And where is the Queen?” Mael asked, his fear surging again, along with the rage that he needed to fight it.

  “She’s close.”

  “Yes, but where?”

  “I cannot say. She’s burnt their tavern house. She hunts the few rogues who haven’t come to the hall. She takes her time with it. And this I’ve learned through the minds of her victims.”

  Khayman could see the creature shudder. He could see subtle changes in him that marked his ever increasing anger. Well and good. The fear withered in the heat of the anger. But what a basically quarrelsome creature this one was. His mind did not make sophisticated distinctions.

  “And why do you give me this warning,” demanded Mael, “when she can hear every word we speak to each other?”

  “But I don’t think that she Can,” Khayman replied calmly. “I am of the First Brood, friend. To hear other blood drinkers as we hear mortal men, that curse belongs only to distant cousins. I could not read her mind if she stood on this spot; and mine is closed to her as well, you can be sure of it. And so it was with all our kind through the early generations.”

  That clearly fascinated the blond giant. So Maharet could not hear the Mother! Maharet had not admitted this to him.

  “No,” Khayman said, “and the Mother can only know of her through your thoughts, so kindly guard them. Speak to me now in a human voice, for this city is a wilderness of such voices.”

  Mael considered, brows puckered in a frown. He glared at Khayman as if he meant to hit him.

  “And this will defeat her?”

  “Remember,” Khayman said, “that excess can be the very opposite of essence.” He looked back at Armand as he spoke. “She who hears a multitude of voices may not hear any one voice. And she who would listen closely to one, must shut out the others. You are old enough to know the trick.”

  Mael didn’t answer out loud. But it was clear that he understood. The telepathic gift had always been a curse to him, too, whether he was besieged by the voices of blood drinkers or humans.

  Khayman gave a little nod. The telepathic gift. Such nice words for the madness that had come on him eons ago, after years of listening, years of lying motionless, covered with dust in the deep recesses of a forgotten Egyptian tomb, listening to the weeping of the world, without knowledge of himself or his condition.

  “Precisely my point, my friend,” he said. “And for two thousand years you have fought the voices while our Queen may well have been drowned by them. It seems the Vampire Lestat has outshouted the din; he has, as it were, snapped his fingers in the corner of her eye and brought her to attention. But do not overestimate the creature who sat motionless for so long. It isn’t useful to do so.”

  These ideas startled Mael somewhat. But he saw the logic of them. Below, Armand remained attentive.

  “She can’t do all things,” Khayman said, “whether she herself knows it or not. She was always one to reach for the stars, and then draw back as if in horror.”

  “How so?” Mael said. Excited, he leaned closer. “What is she really like!” he whispered.

  “She was full of dreams and high ideals. She was like Lestat.” Khayman shrugged. “The blond one down there who would be good and do good and gather to himself the needy worshipers.”

  Mael smiled, coldly, cynically.

  “But what in the name of hell does she mean to do?” he asked. “So he has waked her with his abominable songs. Why does she destroy us?”

  “There’s a purpose, you can be sure of it. With our Queen there has always been a purpose. She could not do the smallest thing without a grand purpose. And you must know we do not really change over time; we are as flowers unfolding, we merely become more nearly ourselves.” He glanced again at Armand. “As for what her purpose may be, I can give you only speculations . . . ”

  “Yes, tell me.”

  “This concert will take place because Lestat wants it. And when it is finished, she will slaughter more of our kind. But she will leave some, some to serve this purpose, some perhaps to witness.”

  Khayman gazed at Armand. Marvelous how his expressionless face conveyed wisdom, while the harried, weary face of Mael did not. And who can say which one understood the most? Mael gave a little bitter laugh.

  “To witness?” Mael asked. “I think not. I think she is cruder than that. She spares those whom Lestat loves, it’s that simple.”

  This hadn’t occurred to Khayman.

  “Ah, yes, think on it,” Mael said, in the same sharp
ly pronounced English. “Louis, Lestat’s companion. Is he not alive? And Gabrielle, the mother of the fiend, she is near at hand, waiting to rendezvous with her son as soon as it is wise to do so. And Armand, down there, whom you so like to look at, it seems Lestat would see him again, so he is alive, and that outcast with him, the one who published the accursed book, the one the others would tear limb from limb if only they guessed . . . ”

  “No, there’s more to it than that. There has to be,” Khayman said. “Some of us she can’t kill. And those who go to Marius now, Lestat knows nothing of them but their names.”

  Mael’s face changed slightly; it underwent a deep, human flush, as his eyes narrowed. It was clear to Khayman that Mael would have gone to Marius if he could. He would have gone this very night, if only Maharet had come to protect Jessica. He tried now to banish Maharet’s name from his thoughts. He was afraid of Maharet, deeply afraid.

  “Ah, yes, you try to hide what you know,” Khayman said. “And this is just what you must reveal to me.”

  “But I can’t,” Mael said. The wall had gone up. Impenetrable. “I am not given answers, only orders, my friend. And my mission is to survive this night, and to take my charge safely out of here.”

  Khayman meant to press, to demand. But he did neither. He had felt a soft, subtle change in the atmosphere around him, a change so insignificant yet pure that he couldn’t call it movement or sound.

  She was coming. She was moving close to the hall. He felt himself slip away from his body into pure listening; yes, it was she. All the sounds of the night rose to confuse him, yet he caught it; a low irreducible sound which she could not veil, the sound of her breathing, of the beat of her heart, of a force moving through space at tremendous and unnatural speed, causing the inevitable tumult amid the visible and the invisible.