by Anne Rice
“Well, I can tell you as a fact,” said Killer, “that lately it’s not been working at all. Right before these massacres started, they were all talking about it, how hard it was to bring somebody over. It was like the Blood was played out. Too many in the Blood. Think about it. The power comes from the Mother, from that demon, Amel, who entered into Akasha and then passed into Mekare, the Queen of the Damned. Well, maybe Amel really is an invisible creature with tentacles just like Mekare once said, and those tentacles have stretched just as far as they can. They just can’t stretch forever.”
Killer sighed. Antoine looked away. He was obsessed.
“I’m going to tell you something horrible I hate to tell anybody,” said Killer. “Last two times I tried to bring somebody over, it flat-out failed. Now it was never like that before, I can tell you.” Killer shook his head. “I tried to bring over the most beautiful little girl I ever saw in one of those towns back there, and it just did not work. It just didn’t work. Come dawn, I did the only thing I could do—chop off her head and bury her, and I’d promised her eternal life and I had to do that. She was a zombie thing, and she couldn’t even talk and her heart wasn’t beating, but she wasn’t dead.”
Antoine shuddered. He’d never had the courage to try. But if this was true, if he did not have the slightest hope of ever ending this loneliness by making another, well, then, that was all the more reason to press on.
Killer laughed under his breath. “It used to seem so easy,” he said, “back when I was making members of the old Fang Gang, but now the filth and the rabble and the trash are everywhere, and even if you make them, they’ll turn on you, rob you, betray you, and take off with someone else. I tell you these massacres have to come. They have to. There’s bad dudes selling the Blood. Can you believe? Selling the Blood. Least they were. I expect they’re played out too and running for their lives now like everybody else.”
Again Killer begged Antoine to stay with him.
“For all we know, Armand and Louis and Lestat are all in this together,” Killer said. “Maybe they’re all doing it, the big heroes of the Vampire Chronicles. But these things have to happen, like I said. I know this is what Benji thinks, but he won’t say it. He can’t. But this is worse than before. Can you hear them, the voices? There was a Burning last night in Kathmandu. Think about it, man. It’s going to move across India, whoever’s doing it, and then into the Middle East. It’s worse than the last time. It’s being more thorough. I can sense it. I remember. I know.”
Tearfully, they parted a short way southeast of New York. Killer wouldn’t go any farther. Benji’s broadcast the night before had confirmed Killer’s worst fears. There had been no direct witnesses to the Burning when it hit Kolkata. Vampires for hundreds of miles caught images of the immolation. They were fleeing west.
“All right, if you’re determined to go through with this,” said Killer. “I’ll tell you what I know. Armand and the others live in a mansion on the Upper East Side half a block from Central Park. It’s three townhouses linked together, and each one’s got a door to the street. There are little Greek columns on each little porch and big limbed trees growing out front surrounded by little skirts of iron.
“These townhouses are maybe five stories high and they’ve got these fancy little iron balconies up high on the windows that aren’t balconies at all.”
“I know what you mean,” said Antoine gratefully. He was picking up the images from Killer’s mind, but it seemed rude to say so.
“It’s gorgeous inside,” said Killer, “like a palace, and they leave all those windows open on nights like this, you know, and they’ll see you long before you ever see them. They could be anywhere up in those high windows looking out long before you even get close. The mansion’s got a name, Trinity Gate. And a lot of blood drinkers can tell you, it’s the gate of death to us if we go there. And remember, my friend, it’s Armand who’s the killer. Back years ago, when Lestat was down and out in New Orleans—after he’d met Memnoch the Devil—it was Armand who kept the trash away from him. Lestat was sleeping kind of in this chapel in this old convent.…”
“I remember from the books,” said Antoine.
“Yeah, well, it was Armand who cleared the town. Antoine, please don’t go there. He’ll blast you right off the face of the Earth.”
“I have to go,” said Antoine. How could he ever explain to this simple survivor that existence was unbearable to him as it was? Even this blood drinker’s company had not been enough to fill the gnawing emptiness inside him.
They embraced before parting. Killer repeated that he was headed out to California. If the massacres were moving west, well, he’d move west too. He’d heard tell of a great vampire physician who lived in Southern California, an immortal named Fareed, who actually studied the Dark Blood under microscopes and sometimes sheltered roamers like Killer, if they would donate some tissue and some blood for experiments.
Fareed had been made with ancient blood by a vampire named Seth, who was almost as old as the Mother. And nobody could hurt Seth or Fareed. Well, Killer was going to look for that doctor in California because he figured that was his only hope. He begged Antoine to change his mind and come with him. But Antoine could not.
Antoine wept afterwards. Alone again. And as he lay down to sleep that morning, he heard the voices wailing, powerful ones crying out, conveying the word. The Burning was annihilating the vampires of India. A great sense of doom filled Antoine. When he thought of all the years he’d roamed and slept in the earth he felt he had wasted the gift Lestat gave him. Waste. He had never thought of it as precious. It had been only a new kind of suffering.
But that’s not what it was for Benji Mahmoud. “We are a tribe and we should think like one,” Benji said often. “Why should Hell have dominion over us?”
Antoine was bound and determined to continue. He had a plan. He wouldn’t try to speak to these powerful Manhattan vampires. He would let his music speak for him. Hadn’t he done that all his long life?
Outside the city—before he stole a car to drive into Manhattan—he had his black hair cut and trimmed modern style by a precious little girl in a salon full of perfume and lighted candles, and then outfitted himself in a fine Armani suit of black wool with a Hugo Boss shirt and a gleaming Versace silk tie. Even his shoes were fancy, made of Italian leather, and he carefully rubbed his white skin with oil and clean paper ash to make himself look less luminescent in the bright city lights. If all these blandishments gave them a moment’s pause he would use that pause to make the violin sing.
At last he was on foot on Fifth Avenue, having ditched the stolen car on a side street, when he heard the wild unmistakable music of Sybelle. And there, yes, was the great townhouse complex described by Killer, Trinity Gate, facing downtown with its many warmly lighted windows, and he could all but hear the powerful heart of Armand.
As he dropped the violin case at his feet, and tuned his instrument rapidly, Sybelle broke off the long turbulent piece she’d been playing and suddenly moved into the soft beautiful Chopin étude “Tristesse.”
Crossing Fifth Avenue, he moved towards the doors of the mansion, already playing with her, following her as he glided into the soft sweet unmistakably sad melody of the étude and racing with her into the more violent phrasing. He heard her hesitate and then her playing moved on, slowly again, and his violin sang with it, weaving high above her. The tears rolled down Antoine’s cheeks; he couldn’t stop them, though he knew they would be tinged with blood.
On and on he went with her, moving beneath her into the deepest and darkest notes he could make on the G string.
She stopped.
Silence. He thought he would collapse. In a blur he saw mortals gathered around him, watching him, and suddenly he brought down his bow, ripping away from the gentle caressing music of Chopin into the strong full melodies of Bartók’s Concerto for Violin, playing both orchestra lines and the violin lines in a torrent of wild, dissonant agonized notes.
He saw nothing suddenly, though he knew the crowd had thickened and no music answered him from the keyboard of Sybelle. But this was his heart, his song now, as he plunged deeper and deeper into the Bartók, his tempo speeding up, becoming almost inhuman, as on and on he went.
His soul sang with the music. It became his own melodies and glissandi as his thoughts sang with it.
Let me in, I beg you, let me in. Louis, let me in. Made by Lestat, never having had a chance to know you, never meant to harm you or Claudia, those long-ago times, forgive me, let me in. Benji, my guiding light, let me in. Benji, my consolation in unending darkness, let me in. Armand, I beg you, find a place in your heart for me, let me in.
But soon his words were lost, he was no longer thinking in words or syllables but only in the music, only in the throbbing notes. He was swaying wildly as he played. He no longer cared whether or not he looked or sounded human, and deep in his heart he was aware that if he were to die now, he would not revolt against it, not with any molecule of his being, because the death sentence would come upon him by his own hand and for what he truly was. This music was what he truly was.
Silence.
He had to wipe the blood from his eyes. He had to, and slowly, he reached for his handkerchief and then held it trembling, unable to see.
They were close. The mortal crowd meant nothing to him. He could hear that powerful heart, that ancient heart that had to be Armand’s heart. Cold preternatural flesh touched his flesh. Someone had taken the handkerchief from him, and this one was blotting his eyes for him, and wiping the thin streaks of blood from his face.
He opened his eyes.
It was Armand. Auburn hair, face of a boy, and the dark burning eyes of an immortal who’d roamed for half a millennium. Oh, this truly was the face of a seraph right off the ceiling of a church.
My life is in your hands.
On all sides of him, people were applauding, men and women clapping for his performance—just innocent people, people who didn’t know what he was. People who didn’t even notice these blood tears, this fatal giveaway. The night was bright with streetlamps, and rows and rows of yellow windows, and the daytime warmth was coming up from the pavements, and the tall tender saplings shed their very tiny leaves in a warm breeze.
“Come inside,” said Armand softly. He felt Armand’s arm around him. Such strength. “Don’t be afraid,” said Armand.
There stood the incandescent Sybelle smiling at him, and beside her the unmistakable Benji Mahmoud in a black fedora with his small hand extended.
“We’ll take care of you,” said Armand. “Come inside with us.”
8
Marius and the Flowers
FOR HOURS, he’d been painting furiously, his only light in the old ruined house an old-fashioned lantern.
But the lights of the city poured in the broken-out windows, and the great roar of the traffic on the boulevard was like the roar of a river, quieting him as he painted.
His left thumb hooked into an old-fashioned wooden palette, his pockets filled with tubes of acrylic paint, he used only one brush until it fell to pieces, covering the broken walls with brilliant pictures of the trees, the vines, the flowers he’d seen in Rio de Janeiro and the faces, yes, always the faces of the beautiful Brazilians he encountered everywhere, walking through the nighttime rain forest of Corcovado, or on the endless beaches of the city, or in the noisy garishly lighted nightclubs he frequented, collecting expressions, images, flashes of hair or shapely limbs as he might have collected pebbles from the frothy margin of the ocean.
All this he poured into his feverish painting, rushing as if at any moment the police would appear with the old tiresome admonitions. “Sir, you cannot paint in these abandoned buildings, we have told you.”
Why did he do it? Why was he so loath to interfere with the mortal world? Why didn’t he compete with those brilliant native painters who spread their murals out in the freeway underpasses and on crumbling favela walls?
Actually, he would be moving on to something much more challenging, yes, he had been giving it a lot of thought, wanting to move to some godforsaken desert place where he might paint on the rocks and the mountains confident that all would restore themselves in time as the inevitable rains would wash away all that he’d created. He wouldn’t be competing with human beings there, would he? He wouldn’t hurt anybody.
Seemed for the last twenty years of his life, his motto had been the same as many a doctor had taken in this world: “First, do no harm.”
The problem with retiring to a desert place was that Daniel would hate it. And keeping Daniel happy was the second rule of his life, as his own sense of well-being, his own capacity to open his eyes each evening with some desire to actually rise from the dead and celebrate the gift of life, was connected to and sustained by making Daniel happy.
And Daniel was certainly happy now in Rio de Janeiro. Tonight Daniel was hunting in the old Leda section of Rio, feasting slowly and stealthily among the dancing, singing, partying crowds, drunk no doubt on music as well as on blood. Ah, the young ones with their insatiable thirst.
But Daniel was a disciplined hunter, master of the Little Drink in a crowd, and a slayer of the evildoer only. Marius was certain of that.
It had been months since Marius had touched human flesh, months since he’d lowered his lips to that heated elixir, months since he’d felt the fragile yet indomitable pulse of some living thing struggling consciously or unconsciously against his remorseless hunger. It had been a heavy, powerful Brazilian man whom he stalked into the darkened woods of Corcovado, flushing him deeper and deeper into the rain forest and then dragging him from his hiding place for a long slow repast.
When had it happened that arterial blood was not enough, and he must rip out the heart and suck it dry also? When had it started that he had to lick the most vicious wounds for the little juice they would yield? He could exist without this, yet he couldn’t resist it, and so he sought—or so he told himself—to make the very most of it when he feasted. There had been but a mangled mess of remains to bury afterwards. But he’d kept a trophy, as he so often did—not just the thousands in American dollars in drug money that the victim had been carrying, but a fine gold Patek Philippe watch. Why had he done that? Well, it seemed pointless to bury such an artifact, but timepieces had of late begun to fascinate him. He had become faintly superstitious about them and knew it. These were remarkable times, and timepieces themselves reflected this in intricate and beautiful ways.
Let it be for now. No hunting. No hunting needed. And the watch was secure on his left wrist, a surprising ornament for him, but so what?
He closed his eyes and listened. Out of his hearing the traffic of the boulevard died away, and the voices of Rio de Janeiro rose as if the sprawling metropolis of eleven million souls were the most magnificent choir ever assembled.
Daniel.
Quickly, he locked in on his companion: the tall thin boyish young man with the violet eyes and the ashen hair whom Lestat had so aptly called “the Devil’s Minion.” It was Daniel who had interviewed the vampire who was Louis de Pointe du Lac, thereby giving birth unwittingly and innocently enough decades ago to the collection of books known as the Vampire Chronicles. It was Daniel who’d captured the damaged heart of the Vampire Armand and been brought over by him into Darkness. It was Daniel who had languished for many a year—shocked, deranged, lost, unable to care for himself—in Marius’s care until only a couple of years ago when his sanity, ambition, and dreams had been restored to him.
And there he was, Daniel, in his tight white short-sleeved polo shirt and dungarees, dancing wildly and beautifully with two shapely chocolate-skinned women under the red lights of a small club, the floor around them so packed that the crowd itself appeared to be one writhing organism.
Very well. All is well. Daniel is smiling. Daniel is happy.
Earlier that evening, Daniel and Marius had been to the Teatro Municipal for a performance of the London Ballet,
and Daniel had pleaded in appealing gentlemanly fashion for Marius to join him as he haunted the nightclubs. But Marius couldn’t bring himself to give in to that request.
“You know what I have to do,” he’d said, heading for the old pastel-blue ruined house he’d chosen for his present work. “And you stay away from the clubs the blood drinkers frequent. You promise me!”
No wars with those little fiends. Rio is vast. Rio is surely the greatest hunting ground in the world with its teeming masses, and its high star-spangled skies, its ocean breezes, its great drowsy green trees, its endless pulse from sunset to sunrise.
“At the slightest sign of trouble, you come back to me.”
But what if there really were trouble?
What if there were?
Was Benji Mahmoud, broadcasting out of New York, right about the coven house in Tokyo having been deliberately burnt to the ground, and all those fleeing from it burnt in their tracks? When a “vampire refuge” in Beijing had burned the next night, Benji had said, “Is this a new Burning? Will this Burning be as fearful as the last? Who is behind this horror?”
Benji hadn’t been born when the last Burning happened. No, and Marius was not convinced that this was indeed another Burning. Yes, coven houses in India were being destroyed. But all too likely it was simply war amongst the scum, of which Marius had seen enough in his long life to know that such battles were inevitable. Or some ancient one, sick of the intrigues and skirmishes of the young, had stepped forth to annihilate those who had offended him.