by Anne Rice
“So what’s the big problem?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it a problem,” said David. “I’d call it a deepening of the secrecy in a new and interesting way. Sometime in the last six months newly appointed Elders started introducing themselves to their colleagues and welcoming communication with them.”
“You mean Elders actually chosen from the ranks,” said Jesse with a bit of an ironic smile.
“Precisely.
“Now in the past,” David went on, “we were always told that the Elders came from the ranks, but once they were chosen they became anonymous except to other Elders, and their location was never revealed to anyone. In olden times they communicated by letter, sending their own couriers to deliver and retrieve all correspondence. In the twentieth century, they moved to fax communication and computer communication, but again, they themselves remained anonymous and their location unknown.
“Of course the mystery was this; no one ever knew personally any member called to be an Elder. No one ever encountered personally anyone who claimed to be an Elder. So it was strictly a matter of faith that the Elders were chosen from the ranks, and as early as the Renaissance, as you know, members of the Talamasca had suspicions about the Elders, and were profoundly uncomfortable with not knowing who they really were or how they passed their power on to succeeding generations.”
“Yes, I remember all this,” I said. “Of course. Marius talked about it in his memoir. Even Raymond Gallant, his friend in the Talamasca, had asked Marius what he knew about the origins of the Talamasca, as if he, Raymond, were uneasy with not knowing more.”
“Correct,” said Jesse.
“Well, now it seems everybody knows who the new Elders are,” said David, “and where their meetings will take place, and all are invited to communicate with these new Elders on a daily basis. But obviously, the mystery of the Elders before this time remains. Who were they? How were they chosen? Where did they reside? And why are they handing off power now to known members?”
“Sounds like what Maharet’s done with the Great Family,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“But you never seriously thought they were immortals, did you?” asked Jesse. “I never did. I simply accepted the need for secrecy. I was told the Talamasca was an authoritarian order when I joined. I was told it was like the Church of Rome, in that its authority was absolute. Never expect to know who the Elders are or where they are or how they know what they know.”
“I’ve always thought they were immortals,” said David.
Jesse was shocked and a little amused. “David, you’re serious?”
“Yes,” said David. “I’ve thought all my life that immortals founded the Order to spy on and record the goings-on of other immortals—spirits, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, whatever. And of course we were to spy on all those mortals who can communicate with immortals.”
I was reflecting. “So the Order’s collected all this data over the centuries, while the central mystery—the origins—remains unexplored.”
“Exactly. And if anything this change moves us farther away from the central mystery,” said David. “Within a few generations the entire mystery might well be forgotten. Our shadowy past will be no more intriguing than the shadowy past of any other ancient institution.”
“That does seem to be what they want,” I said. “They’re bowing out before any serious investigation is mounted, either within or without the Order, to find out who they are. Another decision prompted by the information age? Maharet was right.”
“What if there’s a deeper reason?” David asked. “What if the Order was indeed founded by immortals, and what if these immortals are no longer interested in pursuing the knowledge they wanted so badly? What if they’ve abandoned their quest? Or what if they’ve found out what they wanted to know all along?”
“What could that possibly be?” Jesse asked. “Why, we know no more about ghosts, witches, and vampires than we ever did.”
“That’s not true,” David said. “What have we been discussing here? Think.”
“Too many unknowns,” I said. “Too many suppositions. The Talamasca has an amazing history, no doubt about that, but I don’t see why it couldn’t have been founded by scholars and maintained by them, and what any of this proves. On the surface of it, the Elders have simply changed their method of interacting with the members.”
“I don’t like it,” said Jesse softly. She appeared to shiver. She rubbed the backs of her arms with her long white fingers. “I don’t like it at all.”
“Has Maharet ever told you anything about the Talamasca, anything entirely personal that she alone knew?” asked David.
“You know she hasn’t,” Jesse responded. “She knows all about them; she thinks they’re benign. But no, she’s confided nothing. She’s not terribly interested in the Talamasca. She never has been. You know that. David, you asked her these questions yourself.”
“There were legends,” said David, “legends we never discussed. That we were founded to track the vampires of the Earth, and all the rest of the research was essentially unimportant, that the Elders themselves were vampires.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said, “but then you lived with all the talk, I didn’t.”
“It used to be said that when you died within the Order, the Elders came to you right before death and revealed themselves. But who started that old tale I never knew. And as I kept watch with one dying colleague after another in my time, I came to know this wasn’t true. People died with many unresolved questions about their life’s work, and its value.” David looked at me. “When we first met, Lestat, I was a disillusioned and burnt-out old man. You remember that. I wasn’t sure all my work studying the supernatural had come to anything.”
“Whatever the case, the mystery remains unresolved,” I said. “And maybe I should try to find the answer. Because I think this new development does have something to do with the crisis our kind is facing.” But I broke off, uncertain of what more I could say.
They sat there in silence.
“If it’s all connected, I don’t like it,” I muttered. “All this is too apocalyptic,” I said. “I can live with the notion that this world is a Savage Garden, that things are born and die for random reasons, that suffering is irrelevant to the great brutal cycle of life. I can live with all that. But I don’t think I can live with great overarching connections between things as enduring as the Great Family and the Talamasca and the evolution of our tribe.…”
Fact was, I simply couldn’t put it all together. So why act like the idea of it was frightening me? I wanted to put it all together, didn’t I?
“Oh, well, then you do admit there is a crisis,” David said with a trace of a smile.
I sighed. “All right. There’s a crisis. What I don’t understand is why, exactly. Oh, I know, I know. I woke up the Undead world with my songs and videos. And Akasha awoke and went on a rampage. All right. I get it. But why are all those mavericks everywhere now? They weren’t before. And what’s the impact of these ancient ones rising, and why do we need a Queen of the Damned in the first place? So Mekare and Maharet don’t care to rule. So what? Akasha never ruled. Why didn’t things simply lapse back to the way they’d always been?”
“Because the whole world was changing,” said David impatiently. “Lestat, don’t you see, what you did in ‘coming out’ as a vampire to the public was part of the zeitgeist. No, it didn’t change the mortal world in any way, of course not, but how can you underestimate the effects of your books, your words, all of it on all the blood drinkers in existence? You gave the inchoate masses out there an origin story, a terminology, and a personal poetry! Of course this waked old ones. Of course this invigorated and charged apathetic ones. Of course this roused from torpor wanderers who’d given up on their own kind. Of course this emboldened mavericks to make other mavericks using the famous Dark Trick, Dark Gift, Dark Blood, etcetera!”
None of this was said with contempt, no, but it w
as said with a kind of scholar’s fury.
“And yes, I did my part, I know that,” David continued. “I published the stories of Armand, Pandora, and finally Marius. But the point I’m trying to make is this: you gave a legacy and a definition to a population of shrinking, self-loathing predators who had never dared to claim any such collective identity for themselves. So yes, it changed everything. It had to.”
“And then the human world gave them computers,” said Jesse, “and more and better planes, trains, and automobiles, and their numbers have grown exponentially and their voices have become a chorus heard by all from sea to shining sea.”
I got up off the couch and went to the windows. I didn’t bother to pull back the loose filmy curtains that covered them. The lights of all the surrounding towers were magnificently beautiful through this cloud of white gauze. And I could hear the fledglings out there, milling, pondering, covering the various entrances of the hotel, and reporting to one another, variations of “No action here. Keep watching.”
“You know why this disconcerts you so very much?” David said. He drew up beside me. He was angry. I could feel the heat coming off him. In this strong, stout-chested young body he was my height, and those intense black eyes fixed me with David’s soul. “I’ll tell you why!” he said. “Because you never admitted to yourself that what you did in writing your books, in writing your songs, in singing your songs … you never admitted that it was all for us. You always pretended it was some great gesture to humankind and for their benefit. ‘Wipe us out.’ Really! You never admitted that you were one of us, talking to the rest of us, and what you did, you did as part of us!”
I was suddenly furious. “It was for me that I did it!” I said. “All right. I admit it. It was a disaster, but it was for me that I did it. There was no ‘us.’ I didn’t want the human race to wipe us out, that was a lie, I admit it. I wanted to see what would happen, who would show up for that rock concert. I wanted to find all those I’d lost … Louis, and Gabrielle, and Armand and Marius, maybe Marius most of all. That’s why I did it. Okay. I was alone! I didn’t have any grand reason! I admit it. And so goddamned what!”
“Exactly,” he said. “And you affected the entire tribe and you never took one ounce of responsibility for having done so.”
“Oh, for the love of Hell, are you going to preach vampire ethics from a pulpit?” I said.
“We can have ethics and we can have honor and we can have loyalty,” he insisted, “and every other key virtue we learned as humans.” He was roaring at me under his breath, as the British so often do it, with a veneer of silvery politeness.
“Oh, preach it in the streets,” I said disgustedly. “Go on Benji’s radio show. Call in and tell him and all of them out there. And you wonder why I go into exile?”
“Gentlemen, please,” said Jesse. She sat there still in her armchair looking small, fragile, shaken, shoulders hunched as if against the blast of our argument.
“Sorry, dearest,” said David. He returned to his chair beside her.
“Look, I need the remaining time before dawn,” she said. “Lestat, I want you to give me your iPhone, and you, David, let me give you all the numbers too. E-mail, mobile numbers, everything. We can stay connected with one another. You can e-mail Maharet and me. You can call us. Please, let’s share all our numbers now.”
“So what, the reigning Queen in hiding is willing to share her mobile number?” I asked. “And e-mails?”
“Yes,” said Jesse. David had complied with her request and she was tapping away on the shiny little device, fingers fluttering over it with such speed they were a bit of a blur.
I came back, flopped heavily on the sofa, and threw down my iPhone as if it were a gauntlet on the coffee table. “Take that!”
“Now, please, share with me all the information you’re willing to share,” she said.
I told her again what I’d told Maharet years ago. Contact my attorneys in Paris. As for my e-mails, well, I changed them all the time as I forgot how to use them and tried to learn all over again with some new and superior service. And I always forgot or lost the old devices or the old computers and then had to begin again.
“All the info’s in the phone,” I said. I unlocked it for her and gave it to her.
I watched as she brought the devices up to date. I watched as she shared my information with David, and David’s information with me, and I was ashamed to admit that I was glad I had these ephemeral numbers. I’d shoot a record of all this to my attorney and he’d keep it through thick and thin, even when I’d forgotten how to access it online myself.
“Now, please,” Jesse said finally. “Spread the word. Express my concerns to Marius, to Armand, to Louis, to Benji, to everyone.”
“It will drive Benji out of his gourd to have ‘secret intelligence’ about the twins perhaps immolating themselves,” David said. “That I will not do. But I will indeed try to find Marius.”
“Surely there are old ones in Paris,” I said, “old enough to have spied on us here tonight.” I wasn’t speaking of the riffraff.
Yet I had the feeling Jesse didn’t care. Let the riffraff hear it, for all Jesse cared. Let the old ones hear it. Jesse was frayed from conflict and anxiety. And even confiding in us had not eased her pain.
“Were you ever happy in the Blood?” I asked suddenly.
She was startled. “What do you mean?”
“In the beginning, during those first years. Were you happy?”
“Yes,” she said. “And, I know that I will be happy again. Life is a gift. Immortality is a precious gift. It shouldn’t be called the Dark Gift. That’s not fair.”
“I want to see Maharet in person,” said David. “I want to go with you home.”
Jesse shook her head. “She won’t allow it, David. She knew what I meant to say when I found you. She allowed this. But she will not receive anyone now at home.”
“Do you still trust in her?” asked David.
“In Maharet?” Jesse asked. “Always. Yes, in Maharet.”
That was significant. She didn’t trust the other two.
She was backing away from us towards the double doors to the hallway.
“I’ve given you what I have to give for now,” she said.
“And what if I want to find that vampire in Geneva?” I asked.
“That would be your decision. He’s in love with you. I can’t imagine him hurting you. Does anyone ever try to hurt you?”
“Are you joking?” I asked bitterly. Then I shrugged again. “No, I don’t guess anyone ever does anymore.”
“You’re the one they look to …,” she said.
“So Benji says!” I muttered under my breath. “Well, there’s no reason for them to look to me. I may have started it but I sure as Hell can’t finish it.”
She didn’t answer.
David sprang up suddenly and went to her and took her in his arms. They held each other silently for a moment and then he went with her to the doors.
I knew she was as good at the Cloud Gift as I was, what with all that ancient blood. She’d leave the hotel by the roof so fast she might as well have been invisible.
David closed the doors behind her.
“I want to go walking,” I said. My voice was thick, and suddenly I realized I was weeping. “I want to see that old district where the markets used to be, and the old church. Haven’t been there since … Will you come with me?” I had half a mind to flee now, just go. But I didn’t.
He nodded. He knew what I wanted. I wanted to see the area of Paris where once les Innocents, the ancient cemetery, had existed—beneath which, in torch-lit catacombs, Armand and his Children of Satan coven had held court. It was there that, orphaned by my maker, I’d discovered with shock the others of our kind.
He embraced me and kissed me. This was David whom I knew intimately in this body. This was David’s powerful heart against me. His skin was silken and fragrant with some subtle male perfume, and his fingers were thrilling me va
guely as he took my hand. Blood of my Blood.
“Why do people want me to do something about all this?” I asked. “I don’t know what to do?”
“You’re a star in our world,” he said. “You made yourself that. And before you say anything rash or angry, remember. That’s what you wanted to be.”
We spent hours together.
We moved over the rooftops far too fast for the fledglings below to track us.
We drifted through the streets of les Halles, and through the darkened interior of the great old church of Saint-Eustache with its paintings by Rubens. We sought out the little Fontaine des Innocents in the Rue Saint-Denis—a tiny relic of the olden times—which had once stood beside the wall of the vanished cemetery.
This made my heart both glad and anguished. And I let the memories come back to me of my battles with Armand and his followers who believed so fervently we were anointed servants of the Devil. Such superstition. Such rot.
Eventually some of the paparazzi vampires found us. They were persistent. But they kept their distance. We didn’t have much time.
Pain, pain, and more pain.
No trace remained of the old Théâtre des Vampires or where it had once stood. Of course I’d known that but had to visit the old geography anyway, confirm that the old filthy world of my time had been paved over.
Armand’s magnificent nineteenth-century house—which he’d built in Saint-Germaine-de-Prés—was shut up and maintained by unwitting mortals, full of murals, carpets, and antique furniture covered in white sheets.
He’d refurbished that house for Louis right before the dawn of the twentieth century, but I don’t think Louis had ever been at home in it. In Interview with the Vampire he did not so much as even mention it. The fin de siècle with its glorious painters, actors, and composers had meant nothing to Louis, for all his pretensions to sensitivity. Ah, but I couldn’t blame Louis for shunning Paris. He’d lost his beloved Claudia—our beloved Claudia—in Paris. How could he be expected ever to forget that? And he’d known Armand was a jungle wildcat among revenants, hadn’t he?