by Anne Rice
The vampire with the full well-groomed white hair gave a little nod to Everard, and Everard went silently crazy.
He sent the telepathic message, Well, damn you, blast me if you intend to do it. I’m too frightened to be civil. Get on with it but first, first, I demand that you tell me why.
He killed the music from the iPhone. He didn’t want to die with a soundtrack. And he fully expected to hear the Voice raging and cackling exultantly. But the Voice was not there.
“Miserable coward,” he muttered. “You order my death and decamp without even remaining here to witness it. And you wanted me to burn down the Roman Vampire Refuge in the Via Condotti. Well, you’re ugly and you’re mad.”
The ancient vampire across the way rose to his feet and gestured in a decidedly friendly manner for Everard to join them. He was not overly tall and he was very delicate of build. He took a chair from a nearby table and placed it in their circle. He waited patiently for Everard’s response.
It was as if Everard had forgotten how to walk. All his life in the Undead he’d seen vampires burned by others, seen that horrific spectacle of a living breathing creature going up in a personal inferno because some older more powerful vampire—like that contemptible, condescending Marius—had decided he or she should die. His legs were wobbling so badly as he crossed the street, he thought he would at any moment collapse. His narrow tailored leather jacket felt heavy and his boots pinched and he wondered inanely whether his blue silk tie had a stain on it, and whether the cuffs of his lavender shirt were sticking too far out of his coat sleeves.
His hands were shaking visibly as he reached to accept the hard icy hand of the old vampire. But he managed it. He managed to sit down.
The ghosts were smiling at him, and they were even more perfect than he’d thought. Yes, they breathed, they had internal organs, and yes, they were wearing real clothes. Nothing illusory about that dark worsted wool, or linen and silk. And no doubt all this superb “tissue” could vanish in a twinkling, and the costly clothes would drop to the ground on top of the empty shoes.
The old vampire placed a hand on Everard’s shoulder. He had small but long fingers and he wore two stunning gold rings. This was a traditional way vampires greeted each other, not with embraces, not with kisses, but with the placing of the hand on the shoulder. Everard remembered that from times when he had lived amongst them.
“Young one,” he said with the characteristic pomposity of the elder blood drinkers, “please, do not be afraid.” He spoke in Parisian French.
Up close the ancient one’s face was truly impressive, very fine of feature with exquisite black eyelashes and a serene smile. High cheekbones, a firm, discernible, yet narrow jaw. His skin did look like the petal of a gardenia in the moonlight, yes, and his white hair had a subtle silvery sheen. He hadn’t been Born to Darkness with that hair. Rhoshamandes, Everard’s maker, had long ago explained that when some of the ancient ones were badly burnt their hair was white forever after. Well, it was that kind of magnificent white hair.
“We know you’ve heard the Voice,” said this ancient one. “I too have heard it. Others have heard it. Are you hearing it now?”
“No,” said Everard.
“And it’s telling you to burn others, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Everard. “I have never harmed another blood drinker. Never had to. Never want to. I’ve lived in this part of Italy for almost four hundred years. I don’t go into Rome or Florence to fight with people.”
“I know,” said the ancient one. It was a pleasing voice, a gentle voice, but then all the old ones had good voices, at least as far as Everard had ever observed. What he remembered more than anything else about his maker, Rhoshamandes, was his seductive voice, and that voice luring him into the forest on the night he was Born to Darkness against his will. Everard had thought the lord in the castle was summoning him for an erotic encounter, that afterwards he’d be dismissed with a few coins if he’d managed to please, and that he would have tales of tapestry-covered walls and blazing fires and fine clothes to tell his grandchildren. Ha! He could remember Rhoshamandes talking to him as if it were last night: You are surely one of the most beautiful young men in your village!
“My name is Teskhamen,” said this ancient one who was looking at him with such mild, gracious eyes. “I come from old Egypt. I was a servant of the Mother.”
“Doesn’t everyone say that these days, since the publication of the Vampire Chronicles?” asked Everard angrily before he could stop himself. “Do any of you ever cop to having been a renegade or some clever menace who wheedled the Blood from a Gypsy blood drinker in a ragged caravan?”
The ancient one laughed out loud. But it was a good-natured laugh. “Well, I see I have indeed put you at your ease,” he said. “And that didn’t prove to be hard after all.” His face grew serious. “Do you have any idea who the Voice might be?”
“You’re asking me?” Everard scoffed. “You must have two thousand years in the Blood. Look at you.” He glared at the two ghosts. “Don’t you know who he is?” He flashed back on Teskhamen. “That little monster’s driving me crazy. I can’t shut him out.”
Teskhamen nodded. “I’m sorry to hear that, but it is possible to ignore him. It takes patience and skill, but it can be done.”
“Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, BLAH!” said Everard. “He sticks his invisible needle through my temple. He must be in the vicinity.”
He glared again at the two ghosts. They didn’t even shiver. Sometimes ghosts did that when you glared directly at them. The apparitions shivered or quivered, but not these two.
The one who appeared to be an older man extended his ghostly hand.
Everard took it, discovering it felt entirely human and that it was warm and soft.
“Raymond Gallant,” said the ghost in English. “If you’ll allow it, I’m your friend.”
“Magnus,” said the younger male ghost. His was a marvelous face for anyone, ghost or blood drinker, or mortal, for that matter. His eyes crinkled again agreeably as he smiled and he did indeed have a particularly beautiful mouth, what people call a generous mouth, as well formed as the Apollo Belvedere. His forehead was beautiful, and his hair moving back from it in waves of ashen blond was handsome.
Those names rang a bell, but Everard couldn’t place them. Raymond Gallant. Magnus.
“I don’t think the Voice is in the vicinity,” said Teskhamen. “I think he can be anyplace that he wants to be, anywhere in the world, but it does seem he can only be in one place at a time and of course that ‘place’ is inside a blood drinker’s mind.”
“Which means what, exactly?” demanded Everard. “How’s he doing it? Who is he?”
“That is what we would like to know,” said Raymond Gallant. Again he spoke in British English.
Everard switched into English immediately. He liked the brashness of English, and he had become entirely used to it as the language of the world today. But Everard’s English was American.
“What are you, a blood drinker, doing with two ghosts?” he asked Teskhamen. “No offense intended, believe me. It’s only that I’ve never seen a blood drinker keep company with ghosts.”
“Well, we do keep company,” said the iron-haired apparition, the one who appeared to be an older man. “We have for a long time. But I assure you, we have no evil designs on you or anyone.”
“Then why are you here and asking me questions about this Voice?”
“He’s inciting violence all over the world right now,” said Teskhamen. “Young blood drinkers are being slain in small towns and cities everywhere. This happened once before but we know the cause of that massacre. We don’t know the cause of what’s going on now. And blood drinkers are being quietly annihilated in out-of-the-way places and even in their private sanctuaries without anyone taking notice.”
“Then how did you notice?” asked Everard.
“We hear things,” said the ghost named Magnus. Deep, smooth voice.
Eve
rard nodded.
“There’s an American vampire out of New York broadcasting about it,” said Everard with a faint sneer. There was something insufferably vulgar about those words, and he was mortified suddenly to have spoken them, but at once the three beings all confirmed agreeably that they already knew.
“Benji Mahmoud,” said Teskhamen.
“He’s as addle-brained as the Voice,” said Everard. “The little numbskull thinks we’re a tribe.”
“Well, we are, aren’t we?” asked the ancient one gently. “I always thought we were. We were in olden times.”
“Well, not now,” said Everard. “Listen, this Voice thing promised to destroy me if I didn’t do its bidding. Do you think it has the power to do that? Can it do that?”
“It appears to work in a fairly simply way,” said Teskhamen. “It rouses old ones to burn others, and young ones to burn their lairs. And I suspect it depends entirely on finding gullible and susceptible servants. It seems to have no other plan.”
“Then it can rouse some gullible or susceptible one to stamp out me.”
“We’ll tell you what we can to prevent that,” said Teskhamen.
“Why would you bother?” asked Everard.
“We truly are all one tribe,” said the iron-haired ghost softly. “Human, vampire, spirit, ghost—we’re all sentient creatures bound to this planet. Why can’t we work together in the face of something like this?”
“And to what end?” asked Everard.
“To stop the Voice,” said Teskhamen with just a trace of impatience. “To prevent it from hurting others.”
“But we deserve to be hurt,” said Everard. “Don’t we?” He was surprised to hear this come out of his mouth.
“No, I don’t think that we do,” said Teskhamen. “That’s the kind of thinking that has to change. That’s the kind of thinking that will change.”
“Oh, wait, don’t tell me!” Everard declared. And in a mock-American voice he said, “ ‘We are the change that we seek’! No? Tell me you believe that, and I’m going to fall off this chair and roll into the street laughing.”
The three smiled at him, but he could sense that, polite as they were, they did not like being mocked, and he was suddenly sorry. It penetrated to him with amazing sharpness that these three had been nothing but kind and courteous and that he was behaving crossly and stupidly, wasting these moments, and for what?
“Why can’t we come together,” asked the younger male ghost, “to achieve some kind of peace for the realm we share?”
“And what realm is that?” asked Everard. “Since you’re a ghost, my friend, and I’m flesh and blood, no matter how loathsome I am?”
“I was a human being once,” said the younger ghost. “I was a blood drinker for centuries after that. And I am a ghost now. And my soul has been my soul in all three forms.”
“Blood drinker,” murmured Everard. He was marveling, studying the face of this ghost again and that generous, kindly mouth and the expressive eyes. “Magnus!” he said with a start. “Not Magnus the Alchemist.”
“Yes, that’s who I was,” replied the ghost. “And I knew you in those old times, Everard. You were made by Rhoshamandes and I was made, so to speak, by Benedict.”
Everard laughed out loud. “Methinks it was you who made Benedict all right,” he said. “Stealing the blood from him and making him the laughingstock of blood drinkers everywhere. And so you’ve become a ghost, a ghost of a blood drinker.”
“I don’t think I’m the only one in this world,” said Magnus, “but I’ve had help from my closest friends here, help in becoming what you see before you.”
“Well, it bears no resemblance to the wicked old hunchback I knew,” Everard said, but he was immediately sorry. He looked down and then up. “I regret those words,” he whispered. “I beg your pardon.”
But Magnus was smiling. “No need to be sorry. I was a frightening creature. One of the great advantages of being a ghost is that you can perfect the etheric body much more profoundly than ever you could the physical body even with the Blood. And so you see me as I had always wanted to look.”
It was shaking Everard to his bones that this was Magnus, the Magnus he’d known, yes, and the Magnus who’d made the Vampire Lestat, the fledgling who’d changed vampiric history. And yes, he could somehow see through this dazzle and gloss the Magnus that he had known, that wise and brilliant alchemist who’d begged Rhoshamandes so eloquently for the Blood, that healer who’d worked miracles amongst the poor, and studied the stars with a bronze telescope before ever Copernicus had become famous for it.
This was Magnus, beloved of Notker of Prüm, later brought into the Blood by Benedict quite deliberately and lovingly. Notker was alive now somewhere, of that Everard was certain. Rhoshamandes had said that Notker’s music would be heard in the snowy Alps when a thousand older blood drinkers had gone to their fiery graves.
Magnus a ghost now.
And the other? This Raymond Gallant, who had he been?
“Are you hearing the Voice now?” asked the ghost named Raymond Gallant.
“No,” Everard answered. “He went silent right before I saw you. He’s gone. I don’t know how I know, but he’s gone. I can sort of feel it when he’s aiming his magic beam at me, as if it were some kind of laser.”
He tried not to stare so much at these two. He glanced uneasily at Teskhamen.
“Has he never said anything to you about his ultimate purpose?” asked Teskhamen. “Has he offered you secrets?”
“Mostly threats,” replied Everard. “He’s so childish, so stupid. He tries to prey on my fears, my … my being so very alone of late. But I can see through his tricks. He speaks of unendurable pain, and near blindness, and that he is powerless to so much as lift a finger.”
“He said those things? Used those words?” asked Raymond Gallant.
“Yes, he says he’s helpless on his own, that he requires my loving assistance, my devotion, my trust in him. As if I should trust him! He says I have powers in me of which I don’t dream, and he talks of blood drinkers hiding in Italy and wants me to burn them out. He’s merciless.”
“But you don’t listen to him.”
“Why should I?” asked Everard. “And what can I do if this is one of the ancient ones and if he wants to destroy me? What can I do!”
“You do know how to hide from the Fire Gift, don’t you?” asked Teskhamen. “Your best way is to simply escape. Travel away from the spot as fast as you can, using the Cloud Gift if at all possible to simply get beyond the attacker’s range. If you can go swiftly down into the earth, that’s even better, because it cannot penetrate the earth. Whoever sends the Fire Gift has to see the victim, see the building, see the target. That’s the only way it can work.”
Everard was no expert on any of this. He was more grateful for this clarifying advice, frankly, than he could say. He had to admit Benji Mahmoud had been saying something similar, but he’d never trusted him any more than humans trusted televangelists.
And Everard had never been formally taught a thing about the higher gifts. He was not going to confess that all he knew of them he’d learned from the Vampire Chronicles, and that he’d been practicing his skills, if that’s what they were, based on descriptions written by disreputable vampire authors like Lestat de Lioncourt and Marius de Romanus and so forth and so on. He let these thoughts roll where they might. Curse the Children of Satan and their rules and injunctions. They hadn’t cared anything for vampiric gifts!
Now the great Rhoshamandes, his maker, that was another matter. What tales he’d told of riding the winds, and, oh, the spells he could cast, the visions he could arouse for Everard and others. Rhoshamandes in his burgundy-colored robes, fingers laden with rings, playing chess at his great inlaid-marble chessboard with those kings and queens and knights and bishops and pawns carved especially for him, to whom he’d given various names. Chess was his favorite game, he declared, because it pitted Mind Gift against Mind Gift.
&n
bsp; “Yes,” Magnus whispered. “I remember him so very well. And I often sat at that chessboard with him.”
Everard would have blushed had he been human, to have had his thoughts read that easily, those images examined. But he didn’t mind. He was too fascinated with this ghost of Magnus. So many questions came to his mind: “Can you eat, can you drink, can you make love, can you taste?”
“No,” said Magnus, “but I can see very well, and I can feel hot and cold in a pleasurable way, and I have a sense of being here, being alive, occupying this space, being tangible, and having a tempo in time.…”
Ah, this was Magnus all right, this was Magnus talking, who could talk the night away with Rhoshamandes. How Rhoshamandes had loved him and respected him, throwing a veil of protection about him and forbidding all blood drinkers to harm him. Even after he’d stolen the Blood, Rhoshamandes had not hunted him down and sought to kill him.
“He has a great fascination for me,” Rhoshamandes had said. “And Benedict is to blame for allowing it to happen. But let’s see what he will do with the Blood, poor humpbacked and clever Magnus.”
“Be very careful, Everard,” said Magnus. He looked for all the world like a man of forty-five, or perhaps fifty in these healthy times of plenty and rampant good health, with glowing skin and hair truly the color of ashes. Why hadn’t he made himself flamingly beautiful like the flashy Lestat with that leonine golden mane, and those violet-blue eyes? But as he gazed at Magnus, this seemed a stupid question. This was a splendid being here before him. They were both splendid, these ghosts. And they could change, couldn’t they, anytime they wanted to.
“Yes, but we try not to do that,” said Raymond. “We seek to perfect what we are, not to constantly alter it. We seek to find something that is a true expression of our soul with which to shape what makes up our form. But there’s no need for you to trouble yourself over these things.”