Blood Communion
Page 25
The cries and applause overtook me. I had some more pathetic words inside me still, or so it seemed, but they were lost in the burst of shouting and cheers and applause. And I knew it didn’t matter now to say more. It was clear what was happening.
I saw Armand gazing at me, I saw a faint smile on his lips, and I saw Louis standing beside him, and I saw my beloved Alain with them, gazing at me in wonder, and at his side Fontayne and Barbara.
I looked at Armand. He was splendidly attired in burgundy velvet, himself once more, his fingers covered with jeweled rings as he clapped along with the others. I could not quite believe the calm, accepting expression on his face, but then he nodded. It was just a small nod, a nod no one else would have noticed, but I saw it and I saw him smile again.
Marius embraced me and quickly stepped down and away, and I found myself seated once more, settled back on the red velvet throne, face flushed again—and the orchestra gave its loud voice to the applause and once again the entire throng was moving to the ecstatic music.
I sat back and closed my eyes, and the realization I’d been avoiding since that night, that night that I’d brought Rhoshamandes’s remains back, the realization that I’d avoided as impossible, that realization fully took hold of me.
Visibility, significance, recognition! All that I’d ever wanted when I took to the rock music stage, all that I’d ever wanted as a boy heading to Paris with a head full of dreams, all I’d ever wanted I now had right here with my brothers and sisters! I had all that I had ever hoped for, and I had it here and now in this place and amongst my own people.
The old human story simply did not matter. I had this, I had this moment, I had this recognition, and this visibility and this significance. And how could I ask for anything more? How could I look from right to left, at immortals who had witnessed all the epochs of recorded history, and want more than this? How could I gaze at immortals who’d been drawn to this very spot by something more immense than they’d ever witnessed, and long for more than the recognition they were now giving me?
The victory of our own tribe to embrace one another, and let go of the hatred that had divided us for centuries, was my victory.
“To the Blood Communion,” I said in my heart. And I felt the cold numbing shell of alienation and despair which had imprisoned me all of my life among the Undead—I felt that shell cracked, broken, and dissolved utterly into infinitesimal fragments.
What had been taken from me by Magnus had been repaid a thousandfold. And what had been snatched away that night in San Francisco when Akasha visited death and horror on our rock music spectacle had been given back a thousandfold. And I knew now that I could be the monarch that my people wanted.
Because they were indeed my people, my tribe, my family. And whatever happened hereafter wouldn’t be just my story. No, it would be the story of us all.
The End.
September 26, 2017
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