by Anne Rice
All right, so the “Coven of the Articulate” as they were called had not been made up of social or economic historians. But surely romantics as sensitive as Marius and Lestat would be interested in Gregory’s notions of progress, and particularly his theory that this was the Age of the Vampire, so to speak. This ought to be a Golden Time, to use Marius’s phrase, for all the Undead.
Oh, the time must come when he would meet them.
But even as he told himself that some of this longing and enthusiasm was childish and naïve and even ridiculous, Gregory was drawn almost obsessively to Louis and Lestat. Particularly Lestat.
Louis was a damaged pilgrim, and though he’d been recovering now for the last decade or so, Lestat was indeed the “lion heart” that Gregory wanted to know with his whole soul.
It seemed at times that Lestat was the immortal for whom Gregory had been waiting all this time, the one with whom he could discuss his myriad observations of the Undead and the human stream of history they had followed through six thousand years. Gregory actually fell in love with Lestat.
He knew that he had, and when Zenobia and Avicus teased him about this, or Flavius said it “worried” him, Gregory did not deny it. Nor did he seek to defend it. Chrysanthe understood. Chrysanthe always understood his obsessions. And Davis understood, Davis, his gentle black companion, rescued from the massacre following Lestat’s concert, Davis understood too.
“He was like a god on that stage,” said Davis of Lestat at the concert. “He was the one vampire we all loved! It was as if nothing could stop him, and nothing ever would.”
But something had stopped Lestat most definitely or certainly slowed him down. Demons of his own making perhaps or spiritual exhaustion. Gregory longed to know, longed to sympathize, longed to lend support.
Secretly, Gregory had searched the world for Lestat, and come very close to him many times, spying on him, and divining Lestat’s immense anger and great need to be alone. Always, Gregory had backed off, unable to force himself on the object of his obsession, retreating silently in disappointment and a kind of shame.
Two years ago in Paris, he had drawn close enough to see Lestat in the flesh, rushing there from Geneva at the first word of Lestat’s appearance, yet he had not dared to reveal himself. Only love could create such conflict, such longing, such fear.
Now Gregory felt the very same reluctance to make himself known to the New York coven of Trinity Gate. He could not make an overture. He could not yet extend himself and risk rebuff. No. These creatures meant too much to him. The time was not yet right, no.
Indeed, only one blood drinker in recent years had brought him out of anonymity and that had been Fareed Bhansali, the physician vampire in Los Angeles, who had sufficiently fascinated him to cause him to reveal himself, and this for very specific reasons. For this Fareed was as unique in his own way—if unique can be compared—as the romantic poet vampires Louis and Lestat, in that Fareed was the only modern blood drinker physician known to Gregory.
Oh, in the distant past there had been some, surely, but they were rudimentary healers and alchemists who when they came into the Blood lost all interest in their scientific explorations, and with reason, for there had been a limit for thousands of years to what could be known scientifically.
Magnus, the great Parisian alchemist, had been a perfect example. In his old age, stooped and deformed by the natural wasting of his bones, Magnus had been denied the Blood by the vain Rhoshamandes, who at that time quietly ruled the Undead of France, never allowing their numbers to become unmanageable. Bitter, angry, and not to be outdone, Magnus had managed to steal the Blood from a young acolyte of Rhoshamandes known as Benedict. Binding Benedict and draining his body of blood right at sunset, Magnus had become a full-fledged blood drinker lying stunned on the comatose body of his maker, who found himself upon waking too weak to break his bonds, too weak even to call for help. What shocks this clever theft of the Blood had sent through the entire Undead world. How many would dare to imitate the bold Magnus? Well, precious few ever did. Precious few blood drinkers were ever as careless or stupid as gentle Benedict had been, entrusting the location of his resting place to a mortal “friend.”
And then Magnus, this truly revolutionary thinker, had turned his back entirely on the medical and alchemical knowledge of his human life, holed himself up in a tower near Paris, and devoted himself to the most bitter reflections until he went mad in the end, his only real achievement being the capture and making of the Vampire Lestat. To Lestat, he bequeathed his blood, his property, and his wealth.
Ah, such dreadful failures.
And where was Rhoshamandes now? Where were his fine progeny—the beautiful Merovingian Allesandra, daughter of Dagobert the First, or the disgraced and ever contrite Benedict? Had Allesandra really immolated herself on a pyre in the catacombs under Les Innocents, only because the Vampire Lestat had come marching through her world and destroyed the old Children of Satan who had long kept her mind and her soul and her body prisoner? A pyre might have been enough to destroy the body of Magnus, yes; but Allesandra had been old before Magnus came into existence, though her own age and experience had been lost to her in madness more than once.
Gregory had known little of Rhoshamandes during those centuries but he’d observed much from afar. And why not? Hadn’t Rhoshamandes been his own fledgling? Well, no. The Mother had made Rhoshamandes for the Queens Blood, then given him to Gregory (her devoted Nebamun) to instruct and train.
There were many he hoped to find in the future, including his long-lost Blood Wife, Sevraine. She’d come as a slave into Egypt thousands of years ago, her hair and eyes as fair as those of the red-haired witches, and he, Gregory or Nebamun, Captain of the Queens Blood, had so loved her that he’d brought her over without the Queen’s blessing and almost paid for this the ultimate price. Somewhere out there in the great bright world, Sevraine lived. Gregory was sure of it. And perhaps one dark side of all this misery of late was that the old ones would come together. Even Rhoshamandes would surface, and some of his strong progeny like Eleni and Eugénie, once captives of the Paris Children of Satan. And where was Hesketh? Gregory could not forget about her.
The tragic Hesketh had been the most malformed blood drinker that Gregory had ever encountered, made and loved by the old renegade blood god Teskhamen, who had escaped the Druids who’d worshipped him and sought to put an end to him on their pyre. Gregory had encountered Hesketh and Teskhamen in the wilds of France in the 700s of the Common Era when Rhoshamandes had still ruled in those parts, and later in the far north. Teskhamen had tales to tell, but didn’t they all? Surely those as wise and hearty as Hesketh and Teskhamen still survived.
But the point was, this Fareed Bhansali, a physician vampire, had fascinated Gregory enough to cause him to reveal himself. This Fareed Bhansali appeared unique.
And as word had spread through the world that a blood drinker doctor had indeed appeared “on the scene” in Los Angeles and in fact set up an entire clinic in a medical office tower for the study of the Undead, and that this doctor was powerful and brilliant and had been an accomplished Mumbai surgeon and researcher before being Born to Darkness, Gregory set out to observe this man at close hand.
Indeed, he hurried. He feared that the awful twins—Mekare and Maharet—who now had control of the spirit Amel and the primal fount of the Blood, might burn to ashes this upstart, and Gregory wanted to be there to stop it and whisk away the bold Fareed Bhansali to safety in his own house in Geneva.
Why this doctor did not do anything to hide himself, Gregory couldn’t understand. But Fareed didn’t. Indeed there were times when he seemed positively eager to advertise his presence, seeking mavericks and riffraff everywhere for his research.
But Gregory had another motive for finding Fareed.
For the first time in seventeen hundred years, Gregory was wondering: could Flavius’s missing leg be somehow replaced by some clever device of plastic and steel such as the humans of this ag
e had perfected? Now there was a vampire doctor to provide the answer.
It took some persuading to get Flavius to agree to this experiment, or even to the idea of making the crossing from Europe to America, but when that was finished, Gregory found Fareed at once.
As soon as Gregory came upon Fareed walking in the tree-darkened streets of West Hollywood on a radiant summer evening, Gregory realized his worries for Fareed’s safety had been in vain. Beside him walked a vampire nearly as old as Gregory, and indeed this one was none other than Seth, the son of the ancient Mother.
How strange to see him here, removed by aeons from that long-ago time, this one, standing on the pavements of this modern city, lean and tall as he had always been with powerful shoulders and slender fingers, and a large well-shaped head and those dark almond-shaped eyes. His dark skin had faded over the aeons and he had a pale Oriental cast to him with short black hair and the courtly demeanor of olden times.
The old crown prince.
Seth had been a boy when his mother, Queen Akasha, had been infected with the demon blood, and sent away for his own safety to Nineveh, but as the wars between Queens Blood and First Brood had raged on, the Mother out of concern for him, lest he fall into the wrong hands, had sent for him and brought him over as a young man into the Blood.
Now this Seth had been a healer, true, though Gregory had forgotten it, or so the old stories of those times went. He had been a dreamer and a wanderer who traveled the cities of the two rivers searching for other healers from whom he sought to increase his knowledge, and he had not wanted to return to his mother’s mystery-shrouded court in Egypt. Far from it. He’d been brought by force.
Akasha had given Seth the Blood in a great and pompous ceremony within the royal palace. He must become for her, she said, the greatest leader the Queens Blood had ever known. But Seth had disappointed his mother and his sovereign, and had disappeared into the sands of the desert and the sands of oblivion never to be heard of by anyone ever again.
Now it was Seth—Seth the healer—who walked with Fareed. It was Seth’s powerful ancient blood that fired the veins of Fareed. Of course. The ancient healer had made the vampire doctor.
Fareed was almost as tall as his maker and guardian, with flawless honey-brown skin and ink-black wavy hair. His eyes were green. Something like an Indian Bollywood idol, thought Gregory to himself, with that luxuriant hair and those glittering green eyes. Green eyes had been so very rare in ancient times. One could live a human lifetime back then and never gaze on a being who had blue or green eyes. Their pale-red hair and blue eyes had rendered the witches Mekare and Maharet all the more suspicious and fearsome to the Egyptians, and the beautiful northern slave, Gregory’s beloved Sevraine, had been feared.
As late as the Common Era, when Flavius, a Greek, had come to him, Gregory had been dazzled by the seeming miracle of that golden hair and those blue eyes.
How formally, how courteously, Gregory and Seth had greeted one another. Why, Seth, my friend, it has been six thousand years!
Even the Mother, Mekare, who now housed the demon, could not have burnt or destroyed this powerful doctor as long as Seth was at his side. And each night of their lives—Gregory came to know—Seth gave more of his ancient blood to Fareed.
“Give yours to him and we will gladly do anything to help Flavius,” said Seth, “for yours is pure as well.”
“Is it so very pure?” Gregory asked as he marveled.
“Yes, my friend,” said Seth. “We drank from the Mother. Those who drink from the Mother possess a power like no other.”
And the Vampire Lestat drank from the Mother as well, thought Gregory to himself. And so had Marius, the wanderer. The fledglings of Marius, Pandora, and Bianca, had drunk from the Mother. And so had Gregory’s own Avicus and Zenobia, yes. And Khayman, poor Khayman, was he really a simpleton under the protection of the twins? He had drunk from the Mother as well. How many others had drunk directly from the Mother?
Back in the luxurious bedroom of Fareed’s high-rise living quarters and clinic, Gregory had taken this brilliant doctor into his arms and sunk his needlelike teeth into the man’s soul and his dreams. I shall take your blood and you will drink of my blood and we will know each other and love each other and be brothers now for all time. Blood Kin.
A beautiful being was Fareed. Like many a blood drinker, his morals had been forged in the crucible of his human experience, and they would not give way now to the blandishments of the Blood. He would be forever a servant of vampires, yes, but respecting of all living things, and never engage in that which would harm anyone unless somehow that being had fallen beneath the bar of his concern by being an unspeakable monster of some sort.
What this meant was that Fareed could do no evil, not to vampires or to human beings. Whatever the course of his scientific discoveries they would never be perverted or abused.
But of incorrigible, inveterate, unredeemable evildoers he had had enough in his life, and therefore he could and would pluck from the rampant vampire herd a real bad, no-count, filthy, degenerate bully from whom he could take a leg for Flavius to have grafted on as his own. Indeed, he had taken more than one such vampire body for his experiments. He was candid about that. No, he would never do this to a human, but to a cruel and relentlessly destructive vampire, yes, he could do it. And he did it to get Flavius the leg. A true and living leg that became part of Flavius’s immortal body!
Ah brave new world …
Those nights with Fareed and Seth had been like nothing Gregory had ever experienced, given over to endless scientific talks and visions and experiments. “If either of you gentleman wants to feel the passion of biological men once more, I can arrange this simply with hormonal injections,” said Fareed, “and indeed would like very much if you would yield to me in this and allow me to harvest the seed from the experiments.”
“Are you saying that a living seed can come forth from us again?” asked Flavius.
“Yes,” answered Fareed. “I have achieved this in one case, but the case was not ordinary.” He had indeed infused an eighteenth-century vampire with these powerful hormones and the vampire’s seed had indeed fathered a son. But it had not been simple. Indeed the magic connection had been made in a dish, and the son was more a clone than an offspring, birthed through a biological mother.
Gregory was stunned. So was Flavius.
But what shocked Gregory to the core was not that this had worked, this bit of cellular razzle-dazzle, but that it had worked with a vampire that Gregory had been stalking the world over. Fareed struggled to keep the vampire’s identity secret. But when next Gregory drew the doctor to himself to drink his blood and give his own in return, he reached for deeply buried images and answers and brought them to himself.
Yes, the great rock singer–poet Lestat de Lioncourt had fathered a son.
Then on a bright screen in a dark room Fareed finally revealed to him images of this young human boy, the “spitting image” of his father down to the smallest particular, containing the full packet of his father’s DNA.
“And Lestat knows this?” asked Gregory. “And he has acknowledged this boy?” He realized how ridiculous these words sounded as soon as he’d uttered them, and he knew the answer as well.
Lestat, wherever he was, knew nothing of the existence of young Viktor.
“I don’t think Lestat guessed for a moment,” said Fareed, “that I would attempt such a thing.”
Seth sat in the shadows beside his beloved Fareed as all this was discussed, his narrow angular face impassive, but surely he and Gregory were thinking the same thing. Seth, the Mother’s human son, had once been the most sought-after hostage by her enemies; that’s why the great Queen had sent for him and given him the Blood, to keep him from her enemies who might have tortured him unendingly to demand concessions or surrender from her.
Could not this same fate befall this human boy?
“But what if his enemies have already destroyed Lestat?” asked Flavius
. “No one has heard one word from him for so long.”
“He’s alive, I know he is,” said Gregory. Fareed and Seth had not responded.
That had been years ago, that meeting.
The boy must now be eighteen or nineteen years old, a man for all practical purposes, and nearly the same age his father had been when Magnus raped him and made him a vampire.
Before Gregory and Flavius had taken their leave, Seth had assured them both that he had no ancient grudge against the twins for the slaying of his mother.
“The twins know we’re here,” said Seth. “They have to know. And they don’t care. That’s the secret of the reigning Queen of the Damned. She does not care and her sister does not care. Well, I care. I care about everything under the sun and the moon, and that’s why I made Fareed. But I don’t care about revenge against the twins or about ever seeing them eye to eye. This is of no importance to me.”
Seth had been right of course that Maharet knew, but Gregory had not known it at the time. He had not learned it until much later. And Seth had been merely speculating then. He and Fareed and Maharet had not yet met.
“I understand, I so understand,” said Gregory softly. “But have you never wanted, yourself, to take the demon out of Mekare and into your own body? Have you never felt that simple urge, to dispatch her in exactly the same way that she dispatched the Mother?”
“You mean my mother,” said Seth. “And no. Why would I want the demon in me? What, you think as her son, I see myself as Akasha’s heir to this demon?” He was plainly disgusted.
“Not so much that,” said Gregory, politely backing off. “But so that the threat of our annihilation doesn’t belong to another. So that you have the fount safe within yourself.”
“And why would it be safer with me than anyone else?” asked Seth. “Have you ever wanted to take the Sacred Core into your body?”
They had been in the large drawing room of Fareed’s personal quarters when they had this last discussion. The chill Los Angeles night had warranted a fire, and they were gathered by the hearth in leather chairs. Flavius had this new and functioning leg laid across a leather ottoman, gazing at it from time to time in wonder. Beneath his gray wool trousers, only his sock-covered foot was visible. From time to time he flexed the toes as if to convince himself he possessed this limb fully and completely.