Queen of the Damned

by Anne Rice

  She was laughing when they set her down.

  Her white shirt was smeared with blood. Her hands were covered with it—pale streaks of salty blood. She felt she knew the taste of it. She threw back her head and laughed; and it was so curious not to be able to hear it, only to feel it, to feel the shudder running through her, to know she was crying and laughing at the same time. The guard said something rough to her, something crude, threatening. But that didn’t matter.

  The crowd had her again. It just swallowed her, tumbling against her, driving her out of the center. A heavy shoe crushed her right foot. She stumbled, and turned, and let herself be pushed along ever more violently, towards the doors.

  Didn’t matter now. She knew. She knew it all. Her head spun. She could not have stood upright if it were not for the shoulders knocking against her. And never had she felt such wondrous abandon. Never had she felt such release.

  The crazy cacophonous music went on; faces flickered and disappeared in a wash of colored light. She smelled the marijuana, the beer. Thirst. Yes, something cold to drink. Something cold. So thirsty. She lifted her hand again and licked at the salt and the blood. Her body trembled, vibrated, the way it so often did on the verge of sleep. A soft delicious tremor that meant that dreams were coming. She licked at the blood again and closed her eyes.

  Quite suddenly she felt herself pass into an open place. No one shoving her. She looked up and saw that she had come to the doorway, to the slick ramp that led some ten feet into the lobby below. The crowd was behind her, above her. And she could rest here. She was all right.

  She ran her hand along the greasy wall, stepping over the crush of paper cups, a fallen wig with cheap yellow curls. She lay her head back suddenly and merely rested, the ugly light from the lobby shining in her eyes. The taste of the blood was on the tip of her tongue. It seemed she was going to cry again, and it was a perfectly fine thing to do. For the moment, there was no past or present, no necessity, and all the world was changed, from the simplest things to the grandest. She was floating, as if in the center of the most seductive state of peace and acceptance that she had ever known. Oh, if only she could tell David these things; if only somehow she could share this great and overwhelming secret.

  Something touched her. Something hostile to her. Reluctantly she turned and saw a hulking figure at her side. What? She struggled to see it clearly.

  Bony limbs, black hair slicked back, red paint on the twisted ugly mouth, but the skin, the same skin. And the fang teeth. Not human. One of them!

  Talamasca?

  It came at her like a hiss. It struck her in the chest. Instinctively her arms rose, crossing over her breasts, fingers locking on her shoulders.

  Talamasca?

  It was soundless yet deafening in its rage.

  She moved to back away, but his hand caught her, fingers biting into her neck. She tried to scream as she was lifted off her feet.

  Then she was flying across the lobby and she was screaming until her head slammed into the wall.

  Blackness. She saw the pain. It flashed yellow and then white as it traveled down her backbone and then spread out as if into a million branches in her limbs. Her body went numb. She hit the floor with another shocking pain in her face and in the open palms of her hands and then she rolled over on her back.

  She couldn’t see. Maybe her eyes were closed, but the funny thing was, if they were, she couldn’t open them. She heard voices, people shouting. A whistle blew, or was it the clang of a bell? There was a thunderous noise, but that was the crowd inside applauding. People near her argued.

  Someone close to her ear said:

  “Don’t touch her. Her neck’s broken!”

  Broken? Can you live when your neck is broken?

  Someone laid a hand on her forehead. But she couldn’t really feel it so much as a tingling sensation, as if she were very cold, walking in snow, and all real feeling had left her. Can’t see.

  “Listen, honey.” A young man’s voice. One of those voices you could hear in Boston or New Orleans or New York City. Firefighter, cop, saver of the injured. “We’re taking care of you, honey. The ambulance is on its way. Now lie still, honey, don’t you worry.”

  Someone touching her breast. No, taking the cards out of her pocket. Jessica Miriam Reeves. Yes.

  She stood beside Maharet and they were looking up at the giant map with all the tiny lights. And she understood. Jesse born of Miriam, who was born of Alice, who was born of Carlotta, who was born of Jane Marie, who was born of Anne, who was born of Janet Belle, who was born of Elizabeth, who was born of Louise, who was born of Frances, who was born of Frieda, who was born of—

  “If you will allow me, please, we are her friends—”

  David.

  They were lifting her; she heard herself scream, but she had not meant to scream. She saw the screen again and the great tree of names. “Frieda born of Dagmar, born of . . . ”

  “Steady now, steady! Goddamn it!”

  The air changed; it went cool and moist; she felt the breeze moving over her face; then all feeling left her hands and feet completely. She could feel her eyelids but not move them.

  Maharet was talking to her. “ . . . came out of Palestine, down into Mesopotamia and then up slowly through Asia Minor and into Russia and then into Eastern Europe. Do you see?”

  This was either a hearse or an ambulance and it seemed too quiet to be the latter, and the siren, though steady, was too far away. What had happened to David? He wouldn’t have let her go, unless she was dead. But then how could David have been there? David had told her nothing could induce him to come. David wasn’t here. She must have imagined it. And the odd thing was, Miriam wasn’t here either. “Holy Mary, Mother of God . . . now and at the hour of our death . . . .”

  She listened: they were speeding through the city; she felt them turn the corner; but where was her body? She couldn’t feel it. Broken neck. That meant surely that one had to be dead.

  What was that, the light she could see through the jungle? A river? It seemed too wide to be a river. How to cross it. But it wasn’t Jesse who was walking through the jungle, and now along the bank of the river. It was somebody else. Yet she could see the hands out in front of her, moving aside the vines and the wet sloppy leaves, as if they were her hands. She could see red hair when she looked down, red hair in long curling tangles, full of bits of leaf and earth. . . .

  “Can you hear me, honey? We’ve got you. We’re taking care of you. Your friends are in the car behind us. Now don’t you worry.”

  He was saying more. But she had lost the thread. She couldn’t hear him, only the tone of it, the tone of loving care. Why did he feel so sorry for her? He didn’t even know her. Did he understand that it wasn’t her blood all over her shirt? Her hands? Guilty. Lestat had tried to tell her it was evil, but that had been so unimportant to her, so impossible to relate to the whole. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about what was good and what was right; it was that this was bigger for the moment. Knowing. And he’d been talking as if she meant to do something and she hadn’t meant to do anything at all.

  That’s why dying was probably just fine. If only Maharet would understand. And to think, David was with her, in the car behind them. David knew some of the story, anyway, and they would have a file on her: Reeves, Jessica. And it would be more evidence. “One of our devoted members, definitely the result of . . . most dangerous . . . must not under any circumstances attempt a sighting . . . .”

  They were moving her again. Cool air again, and smells rising of gasoline and ether. She knew that just on the other side of this numbness, this darkness, there was terrible pain and it was best to lie very still and not try to go there. Let them carry you along; let them move the gurney down the hallway.

  Someone crying. A little girl.

  “Can you hear me, Jessica? I want you to know that you’re in the hospital and that we are doing everything we can for
you. Your friends are outside. David Talbot and Aaron Lightner. We’ve told them that you must lie very still. . . . ”

  Of course. When your neck is broken you are either dead or you die if you move. That was it. Years ago in a hospital she had seen a young girl with a broken neck. She remembered now. And the girl’s body had been tied to a huge aluminum frame. Every now and then a nurse would move the frame to change the girl’s position. Will you do that to me?

  He was talking again but this time he was farther away. She walked a little faster through the jungle, to get closer, to hear over the sound of the river. He was saying . . . .

  “ . . . of course we can do all that, we can run those tests, of course, but you must understand what I’m saying, this situation is terminal. The back of the skull is completely crushed. You can see the brain. And the obvious injury to the brain is enormous. Now, in a few hours the brain will begin to swell, if we even have a few hours. . . . ”

  Bastard, you killed me. You threw me against the wall. If I could move anything—my eyelids, my lips. But I’m trapped inside here. I have no body anymore yet I’m trapped in here! When I was little, I used to think it would be like this, death. You’d be trapped in your head in the grave, with no eyes to see and no mouth to scream. And years and years would pass.

  Or you roamed the twilight realm with the pale ghosts; thinking you were alive when you were really dead. Dear God, I have to know when I’m dead. I have to know when it’s begun!

  Her lips. There was the faintest sensation. Something moist, warm. Something parting her lips. But there’s no one here, is there? They were out in the hallway, and the room was empty. She would have known if someone was here. Yet now she could taste it, the warm fluid flowing into her mouth.

  What is it? What are you giving me? I don’t want to go under.

  Sleep, my beloved.

  I don’t want to. I want to feel it when I die. I want to know!

  But the fluid was filling her mouth, and she was swallowing. The muscles of her throat were alive. Delicious the taste of it, the saltiness of it. She knew this taste! She knew this lovely, tingling sensation. She sucked harder. She could feel the skin of her face come alive, and the air stirring around her. She could feel the breeze moving through the room. A lovely warmth was moving down her spine. It was moving through her legs and her arms, taking exactly the path the pain had taken, and all her limbs were coming back.

  Sleep, beloved.

  The back of her head tingled; and the tingling moved through the roots of her hair.

  Her knees were bruised but her legs weren’t hurt and she’d be able to walk again, and she could feel the sheet under her hand. She wanted to reach up, but it was too soon for that, too soon to move.

  Besides she was being lifted, carried.

  And it was best to sleep now. Because if this was death . . . well, it was just fine. The voices she could barely hear, the men arguing, threatening, they didn’t matter now. It seemed David was calling out to her. But what did David want her to do? To die? The doctor was threatening to call the police. The police couldn’t do anything now. That was almost funny.

  Down and down the stairs they went. Lovely cold air.

  The sound of the traffic grew louder; a bus roaring past. She had never liked these sounds before but now they were like the wind itself, that pure. She was being rocked again, gently, as if in a cradle. She felt the car move forward with a sudden lurch, and then the smooth easy momentum. Miriam was there and Miriam wanted Jesse to look at her, but Jesse was too tired now.

  “I don’t want to go, Mother.”

  “But Jesse. Please. It’s not too late. You can still come!” Like David calling. “Jessica.”

  Daniel

  ABOUT halfway through, Daniel understood. The white-faced brothers and sisters would circle each other, eye each other, even threaten each other all during the concert, but nobody would do anything. The rule was too hard and fast: leave no evidence of what we are—not victims, not a single cell of our vampiric tissue.

  Lestat was to be the only kill and that was to be done most carefully. Mortals were not to see the scythes unless it was unavoidable. Snatch the bastard when he tried to take his leave, that was the scheme; dismember him before the cognoscenti only. That is, unless he resisted, in which case he must die before his fans, and the body would have to be destroyed completely.

  Daniel laughed and laughed. Imagine Lestat allowing such a thing to happen.

  Daniel laughed in their spiteful faces. Pallid as orchids, these vicious souls who filled the hall with their simmering outrage, their envy, their greed. You would have thought they hated Lestat if for no other reason than his flamboyant beauty.

  Daniel had broken away from Armand finally. Why not?

  Nobody could hurt him, not even the glowing stone figure he’d seen in the shadows, the one so hard and so old he looked like the Golem of legend. What an eerie thing that was, that stone one staring down at the wounded mortal woman who lay with her neck broken, the one with the red hair who looked like the twins in the dream. And probably some stupid human being had done that to her, broken her neck like that. And the blond vampire in the buckskin, pushing past them to reach the scene, he had been an awe-inspiring sight as well, with the hardened veins bulging on his neck and on the backs of his hands when he reached the poor broken victim. Armand had watched the men take the red-haired woman away with the most unusual expression on his face, as if he should somehow intervene; or maybe it was only that the Golem thing, standing idly by, made him wary. Finally, he’d shoved Daniel back into the singing crowd. But there was no need to fear. It was sanctuary for them in this place, this cathedral of sound and light.

  And Lestat was Christ on the cathedral cross. How describe his overwhelming and irrational authority? His face would have been cruel if it hadn’t been for the childlike rapture and exuberance. Pumping his fist into the air, he bawled, pleaded, roared at the powers that be as he sang of his downfall—Lelio, the boulevard actor turned into a creature of night against his will!

  His soaring tenor seemed to leave his body utterly as he recounted his defeats, his resurrections, the thirst inside him which no measure of blood could ever quench. “Am I not the devil in you all!” he cried, not to the moonflower monsters in the crowd but to the mortals who adored him.

  And even Daniel was screaming, bellowing, leaping off his feet as he cried in agreement, though the words meant nothing finally; it was merely the raw force of Lestat’s defiance. Lestat cursed heaven on behalf of all who had ever been outcasts, all who had ever known violation, and then turned, in guilt and malice, on their own kind.

  It seemed to Daniel at the highest moments as though it were an omen that he should find immortality on the eve of this great Mass. The Vampire Lestat was God; or the nearest thing he had ever known to it. The giant on the video screen gave his benediction to all that Daniel had ever desired.

  How could the others resist? Surely the fierceness of their intended victim made him all the more inviting. The final message behind all Lestat’s lyrics was simple: Lestat had the gift that had been promised to each of them; Lestat was unkillable. He devoured the suffering forced upon him and emerged all the stronger. To join with him was to live forever:

  This is my Body. This is my Blood.

  Yet the hate boiled among the vampire brothers and sisters. As the concert came to a close, Daniel felt it keenly—an odor rising from the crowd—an expanding hiss beneath the strum of the music.

  Kill the god. Tear him limb from limb. Let the mortal worshipers do as they have always done—mourn for him who was meant to die. “Go, the Mass is ended.”

  The houselights went on. The fans stormed the wooden stage, tearing down the black serge curtain to follow the fleeing musicians.

  Armand grabbed Daniel’s arm. “Out the side door,” he said. “Our only chance is to get to him quickly.”

  Khayman

  IT WAS just as he
had expected. She struck out at the first of those who struck at him. Lestat had come through the back door, Louis at his side, and made a dash for his black Porsche when the assassins set upon him. It seemed a rude circle sought to close, but at once the first, with scythe raised, went up in flames. The crowd panicked, terrified children stampeding in all directions. Another immortal assailant was suddenly on fire. And then another.

  Khayman slipped back against the wall as the clumsy humans hurtled past him. He saw a tall elegant female blood drinker slice unnoticed through the mob, and slide behind the wheel of Lestat’s car, calling to Louis and Lestat to join her. It was Gabrielle, the fiend’s mother. And logically enough the lethal fire did not harm her. There wasn’t a particle of fear in her cold blue eyes as she readied the vehicle with swift, decisive gestures.

  Lestat meantime turned around and around in a rage. Maddened, robbed of the battle, he finally climbed into the car only because the others forced him to do so.

  And as the Porsche plowed viciously through the rushing youngsters, blood drinkers burst into flame everywhere. In a horrid silent chorus, their cries rose, their frantic curses, their final questions.

  Khayman covered his face. The Porsche was halfway to the gates before the crowd forced it to stop. Sirens screamed; voices roared commands; children had fallen with broken limbs. Mortals cried in misery and confusion.

  Get to Armand, Khayman thought. But what was the use? He saw them burning everywhere he looked in great writhing plumes of orange and blue flame that changed suddenly to white in their heat as they released the charred clothes which fell to the pavements. How could he come between the fire and Armand? How could he save the young one, Daniel?