by Anne Rice
There—by the great fireplace on the left side of the ballroom—stood Rhoshamandes.
Chapter 12
Allesandra rose to her feet. It seemed no one else moved but Allesandra. She alone held out her hands with the bloodstained brown robe.
And the fire moved. The flames moved licking and devouring the white bones of the dead Benedict.
Rhoshamandes stood stock-still in his long velvet robe, only the tips of his black boots visible beneath the hem, his fair hair torn by the wind, and frost clinging to his arms and his shoulders. He appeared begrimed with frost.
He stared at the robe that Allesandra held in her hands.
Slowly she walked across the great empty dance floor, without making the softest sound, and held it out to him.
He stared at it as if he could not divine the meaning of it. And then his eyes moved to the fire, and he saw there the melting skull now cleansed by the flames of all flesh, the flames licking its empty eyeholes.
“Give the word,” Gregory whispered in my ear.
“No,” I murmured. “No. He must not be harmed. He’s done nothing.”
If Rhoshamandes could hear us, he gave no sign.
Allesandra wept in low hollow sobs. She moved to the other side of the great marble fireplace and looked down at the bones.
“He wanted it, my lord,” she said. “He gave his blood to the young, as the old ones did in our first times together. It was his choice. No one harmed him.”
Rhoshamandes looked up and away and then his eyes fixed on me.
His face for one moment was calm and still, washed clean of any visible emotion, and for all I knew he was staring at nothing, and certainly not at the blond Prince before the high-backed throne that Benedict had given him.
Then his face clabbered, clabbered like that of a child. His eyes quivered, and a soft shuddering moan escaped his lips. A roar broke from him that was louder than the music had ever been. A great openmouthed roar of pain such as no beast on Earth could ever make but only a feeling, suffering sentient being.
He clutched at himself with his own hands, hugging himself with his own arms, and the look of pain on his face was unbearable.
It was utterly unbearable.
If I were a painter I would never ever in all my life paint the image of that pain. I would never, never in all my life want to capture it. Let words try and fail and spare us all the expression of that agony.
“Now, give the word,” whispered Marius.
“No, for the love of God, no. What has he done?” I whispered.
Rhoshamandes stared at me. There was no doubt now that he saw me. He didn’t stare past me but at me. Sevraine stepped in front of me, and Gregory cleaved to my right side. I knew Seth was over my left shoulder.
Rhosh’s lips twisted and struggled with the pain, and his eyes were pressed closed with blood tears and then they opened again. The emotion was drained from his face, and his eyes, which had never left me for an instant, were now filled with hatred.
Hatred I could feel across the width of the ballroom.
“You have done this to me,” he whispered in a dry aching voice. “You have done this to me!” he shouted. And then he roared the words, “You with your Court and your cohorts, you have done this!”
Everywhere blood drinkers covered their ears.
Again, his face clabbered. He turned and reached into the fire, and grabbed up the skull and pressed it hard between his hands until it was nothing but powder. He rubbed the powder all over his face and his hair as he moaned, moaned over and over again.
I felt a great roaring blast of air come at me, a blast of searing icy wind, and I heard a sound as fierce as the blast, and saw a great swirl of color and movement. The far side of the room, the side wide open to the mountain and the windows, was suddenly broken out. The chandeliers fell with a crash to the ballroom floor, and screams rose all around me.
Rhosh was gone.
I sighed and put my hands to my eyes. I felt nothing but pity, nothing but sorrow for him.
Until five minutes later, when they told me that he had taken my mother with him.
Chapter 13
This is how it happened.
Gabrielle had been against the wall on the other side of me from the orchestra. She had drawn back there along with Louis and Bianca and Armand. Armand had been right beside her. And they had stood watching Rhoshamandes together. They knew I was safe, they said. That was their only thought, and Armand understood that I wanted no harm to come to Rhoshamandes.
Then they too had felt the wind, the noise of chandeliers smashed to the floor, and they had drawn together.
And only then did Armand, looking about himself to make sure of the safety of all he saw, realize that Gabrielle was nowhere in sight.
The word had gone out in a whisper. “Where is Gabrielle?”
And then Gabrielle’s voice had come over the wind to Sevraine and Armand and Marius and a multitude of those who could, unlike me, hear her.
He has me. I can’t get loose from him.
If she could hear any of us after that, she was unable to answer.
Speed and surprise. The words Jesse had used. Speed and surprise. Rhoshamandes had used both.
And with a sinking heart I sat on the ornate gilded throne realizing that my mother was likely already destroyed in payback for Benedict.
The Great Sevraine had gone after him, and Seth had gone with her—leaving Gregory to guard me along with Thorne and Cyril.
But Sevraine and Seth came back within the hour to report exactly what we all expected. They could find no sign of him anywhere. They left again, determined to search every room of his citadel on Saint Rayne. But I knew he would never be fool enough to go there and wait for the others to come after him.
I knew that, but it wasn’t a thought. I was empty of thoughts. I was as empty of thoughts as I was of breath. I knew things, but I thought nothing.
I held the image of Rhosh’s stricken face in my mind, and I heard his roar of pain, but I thought nothing.
Fortunately no one said anything inane, such as “Don’t give up hope” or “Surely he won’t hurt her.”
Through all the whispering and rustling ballroom, as Barbara’s people swept up the crystals of the chandeliers, and the broken links of silver and gold, as workers were already at work, plastering up the stones of the wall retrieved from the snow below, nobody said anything stupid.
And thankfully, no one asked, “Why on earth didn’t you give the word to kill him? Why? Why? Why?”
Armand was crushed with grief that he had not prevented this. He sat on the dais weeping with Allesandra beside him.
And I sat on in the medieval throne, with my arms folded—with the life of my mother flashing before me, a silent torrent of images, words, and again I thought nothing, nothing, nothing. But I knew I could not bear the pain of this. I could not go on living if she were dead, she my first fledgling, first child of my blood and mother of my body. My life was finished.
Chapter 14
It had been three hours before dawn when Rhoshamandes took my mother.
Two hours later, Sevraine and Seth returned, saying that they had not found him in his castle on Saint Rayne, and his mortal servants, sweet guileless old mortals, had quite freely explained that their master had not been in residence for some time. It was their guess that he might be in France, but they truly did not know.
Sevraine had brought back the computers she found in the house, and papers purloined from his bedchambers. The beloved Children of Atlantis had been alerted right away to all that had taken place, and Fareed took the computers to them in their deep hideaway chambers at Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals, where Kapetria and Fareed vowed to search the hard drives for any clue to other places that Rhoshamandes might have established as residences.
I lis
tened. I understood. I knew. I did not think.
Those who could reason and speak had concluded that Rhoshamandes would not stop his assault with my mother. And so Rose, Viktor, Louis, and Antoine, and Sybelle and Benji and Armand, had all gathered in the crypts close to mine for their rest, and would remain here after sunset as well, being guarded as I was. Marius had taken over the supervision of the Château, advising others under the roof to come to the crypts as well. There was ample space for them in the great warren we had dug out of the earth at the very beginning of our residence here. Those who didn’t want to be confined were urged to leave the Château for their own safety. All agreed that no one was safe.
When I was finally led down the stairs, Louis came with me. In the darkened passage before my resting place, he embraced me and held tight to me, his lips pressed to my ear. I was aware of my hands moving over his hair, embracing his neck, drawing him ever closer, in a way I had never done in our long years in New Orleans. We joined in the posture of lovers, brothers, fathers with sons.
“I love you with my whole soul, and I will always love you,” he confided to me. “You are my life. I have hated you for that and love you now so much that you’ve been my instructor in loving. And believe me when I say you will survive this, and that you must for all of us. You will survive because you always have and you always will.”
I couldn’t answer. I knew I loved him more than words could say, but I couldn’t respond.
As I lay down, not in my coffin, but again on the marble shelf where I preferred to sleep of late, Cyril sat against the wall and fell asleep as if by will, and closing my eyes, I homed in on Paris where Kapetria, our lovely loyal Kapetria, was already hard at work, delving into the private fortune and wealth of Rhoshamandes.
Just before I lost consciousness, fighting it wildly and stupidly, I was aware of Gregory entering, dressed in a long robe once more with jewels embroidered around the neck and cuffs. I saw the jewels suddenly removed to a dark sky and twinkling like stars and I thought, She is dead, he has destroyed her, and how do I know? Because that’s what I would have done. I would have destroyed her.
When I awoke, Gregory was sitting at the foot of my marble bed and all of his rippling hair had grown back, along with his thick mustache and beard. He was staring forward. Cyril was not with us. Cyril always woke before me, I had been aware of that for some time, and wasn’t surprised that he had gone out. He detested being cooped up in crypts, he often said, and slept deep in caves rather than in the earth when he had a choice.
Again, I was numb with something so much worse than pain that I could hardly breathe. And I wasn’t thinking. I was knowing.
I felt a raging thirst. No sooner had I recognized it than Gregory turned to me and welcomed me into his arms.
I wish I could put into words for you how very different vampiric blood is from human blood. Human blood is hot and salty and varies enormously in subtle flavor, often laced with spice and the aftertaste of food eaten, and it comes in spurts driven by the heart of the victim, unless one draws it out fast, which can rupture the being’s heart.
Vampire blood is smooth, uniform in sweet delicious taste, finding the arteries and veins of the recipient as if it has a life of its own, which I suppose it does, and it varies only in thickness—from the luscious wine of a young vampire like Louis to the rich syrup of Gregory—or Akasha. I said once that it was like light, vampire blood, and it is.
It is as if I’m drinking light, to drink vampire blood, my senses being utterly confused, and in intermittent flashes, I see the great web of circuits of the body giving me the blood or my own body receiving it. Or perhaps both. Perhaps the circuits are congruent as I drink vampire blood. I don’t know.
But as I drank from Gregory now, I saw no flaming images, no pictures, caught no story, only the outpouring of complete sympathy or what the modern world calls empathy. I felt so utterly loved and supported that it seemed my anguish was receiving its highest justice; he not only recognized the very depth of the torture I was experiencing but understood it and wished to take it to himself completely.
I drank until I couldn’t take any more. But I wasn’t conscious of pulling away. I merely awoke lying on my back in the little cell, with the door half open to the lighted corridor, and the blood heating me through and through so wondrously that I would have done anything to cling to that feeling forever.
Gregory sat on my coffin to my right. He had folded his arms and was looking about my cell with slowly moving eyes, as if he were an angel from an ancient Sumerian paradise deposited here to guard me and protect me.
He began talking. He told me that Kapetria and Derek and their helpful clones had broken into all of Rhoshamandes’s complex financial networks, and not only discovered the sources of his immense wealth, but managed to freeze all access to it. They had hacked into all the computer systems of Rhosh’s attorneys and destroyed the vital information needed not only to access and manage the wealth but also the data needed for personal communication with their powerful client. They had emptied half of Rhosh’s bank accounts by late afternoon on this day, and would have all of his wealth transferred out of his hands by midnight.
They had also begun to shift into fictitious accounts the titles to all his properties, including the island of Saint Rayne with its great castle, a house in Budapest, which had formerly belonged to the blood drinker Roland, on which Rhosh had called a mortgage, and huge vineyards in France and in Italy, from which most of Rhosh’s income had been derived, and new vineyards in California which had only lately been acquired, and small houses in random places, including Germany, Russia, and the southern Pacific islands.
I wanted to say, “But what if she is still alive?” But I said nothing. It was the first coherent and purposeful thought that had come to me since she’d been taken.
“Then he will come to sue for peace,” said Gregory. He looked at me with his intense dark eyes, the flowing hair and beard giving him a spiritual authority that comforted me. “That is the idea,” he continued. “There are as many ways to travel the Devil’s Road as there are immortals traveling it,” he said. “But for Rhoshamandes, the road is paved with gold and always has been. His bank cards are now of no use; his plane is grounded outside London, and everything of value on Saint Rayne has been taken.”
He went on, explaining to me that just after Kapetria had come to us, which was now a year ago, the Children of Atlantis had been investigating Rhosh, in fear of the day when he might attempt to harm them. But they had found secrets today of which they hadn’t known before.
“Wine,” I whispered. “So it’s from wine he takes his wealth.” My voice was small and weak, a rather despicable voice.
“Yes, centuries ago he planted his vineyards in the Loire Valley,” said Gregory. “The assault on his resources is total. But unless I’ve overestimated him, he has wealth stashed somewhere of which no one knows anything, no attorney, no lawyer, no land agent. If he doesn’t, then he’s a fool, and he always was a bit of a fool.”
“Where do you think he is now?” I asked. My voice sounded strange to me, weak and spiritless. Not my voice.
“On the other side of the world, perhaps,” said Gregory. “I’ve been searching for him since I opened my eyes. I’ve been sifting through the cities and the towns and the villages of the British Isles, the European continent, the land of Russia. And so has Seth and so has Sevraine. Sevraine is mad in her grief, mad. She paces like a panther, and pounds her right fist into her left palm, the safest place for the force of it. Avicus has come to join us. Avicus is ancient. And Flavius has arrived as well. These are mighty telepaths. They are mighty guards.”
I didn’t say anything more.
I heard footsteps in the passage and a soft knock at the door. The mingled sobs and curses of blood drinkers, angry whispers.
Gregory opened it and stood with his back to me so that I could
see only the dim electric overhead lights in the passage.
Then Gregory closed the door and looked at me, the mighty Sumerian angel in his glittering garb.
“A small casket has arrived, by means of some mundane service in the mortal world. It contained a small vial of ashes. And a coat of khaki cloth, and wrapped in the cloth—was a long thick lock of hair tied with a boot lace.”
I closed my eyes.
Images of my mother filled my mind. I saw her walking in her long winter garments of hundreds of years ago through the village street, and at Mass on her knees with the beads in her hands, asleep as she leaned against the stone column of the church.
I could not bear this. I couldn’t breathe. I turned my face to the wall. She never harmed you. You coward. You killed a being who did nothing to you at all.
It felt just a little better to talk that way. I felt I was going to start weeping and I panicked.
Gregory’s hands turned my face upwards, away from the wall.
His large black eyes were soft and wondering. I felt an immediate sense of dislocation. I was drifting. I was falling into sleep.
I felt his fingers close my eyes. “Sleep,” he whispered, and I let the spell envelop me. “Yes,” I whispered in French. I knew what he was doing and I drifted down and down into slumber, the sweetest slumber, snug in a bed of warm blankets just taken from the old hearth in my old room, and my mother was bringing the blankets up to my chin, and beaming down at me, her little boy, her useless, powerless little boy—and there came a blissful contentment muffling everything that was me in which nothing mattered, nothing was known, nothing was felt.
I dreamed I rose high into the Heavens. And it seemed that a great many marvelous things happened—that I met splendid beings and we conversed together and they explained to me the entire meaning of life. Out beyond the bounds of our solar system, they showed me all the universe. They explained how one travels from planet to planet, by the sheer power of thought. Why, that makes perfect sense, of course, I thought. A great feeling of understanding the most marvelous things enchanted me and sustained me. Of course, there would be no vast universe, I understood, unless we could travel it with such ease and, yes, every single thing now was clear.