Prince Lestat: The Vampire Chronicles

by Anne Rice

  “Come here,” I said, “and collect your maker because as soon as my son is safe in my arms, I’ll give him back what I’ve taken from him.” I promised nothing else.

  I stood up and turned and faced the others. I wondered how many of them wanted me to be their leader now. Well, I had given them a gruesome taste of what I was capable of, acts that were far more difficult to perform for anyone with a drop of humanity in him than simply blasting others away with invisible force or exterminating heat. I’d given them a really good taste of what sort of ruler I might be.

  I expected a certain amount of contempt with an equal measure, I hoped, of grudging sympathy, but I saw nothing but simple expressions, eyes fixed on me as agreeably and even generously as ever. True, Sybelle was crying and Bianca was trying to comfort her, but I sensed no hostility from any of them.

  Flavius was actually smiling at me. And Zenobia and Avicus were entirely calm. Pandora seemed lost in her own thoughts, and Arjun merely gazed at me with obvious admiration.

  Gregory had a subtle smile on his face. And Armand’s expression was very nearly the same. There was even the faintest smile on Louis’s face, and that amazed me, though there was some other element in it, which I couldn’t define. Notker was gazing at me with an open, affable expression, and Sevraine was looking coldly at Rhoshamandes without the slightest apparent emotion, while Eleni was looking up with frank admiration and Eugénie merely watched without obvious concern.

  Armand stood up, his eyes as innocent and submissive as they always appeared.

  “They’ll be coming into the back garden,” he said. “Let me show you the way.”

  “I think you should destroy this one,” said Benji with a serious frown as he looked at Rhoshamandes. “He cares nothing about any of us. He cares only for his Benedict and himself.”

  Rhoshamandes showed no sign that this surprised him or even that he’d heard.

  “Lestat,” said Benji. “You are our prince now. Destroy him.”

  “He was tricked,” said Allesandra again softly.

  “They killed the great Maharet,” said Notker under his breath. He gave a little shrug, one eyebrow raised eloquently. “They killed her. They took counsel from no one. They should have come to you, to the others here, to us.”

  “Except the Voice bewitched them,” said Allesandra, “and the Voice lies and the Voice is treacherous.”

  I could hear the Voice snickering and murmuring and then he cried out, startling me, positively screaming in my head, exploding all rational thought, but I quickly regained my poise. “Destroy him,” said the Voice. “He bungled everything.”

  I almost laughed out loud, but pressed my lips together in a bitter smile.

  But Rhoshamandes knew what the Voice had just said to me. Rhoshamandes had picked it up from my mind.

  He looked at me, but nothing changed in his calm face, and then slowly he looked away.

  “I gave my word,” I said to Benji. “When Viktor comes, we’ll give him back these fragments. I can’t break my word.”

  I went round the table and towards Rose.

  She lay pale and shuddering against the satin pillows. I collected her in my arms and carried her out of the ballroom behind Armand.

  25

  Lestat

  The Garden of Love

  IT WAS a vast space, walled in brick, and lined with young oak trees rising some three stories with bright green leaves. There were banks of flowers, and pathways winding through patches of flowers, and all of this artfully lighted with electric bulbs concealed at the roots of the trees and the shrubbery, and little Japanese stone lanterns here and there on patches of grass with flickering flames.

  The dull soothing roar of Manhattan seemed to enfold it as surely as the dim hulking outline of tall buildings behind it and on either side. Three townhouse gardens had been joined, obviously, to make this little paradise, this lovingly tended place that seemed as verdant and vital as an old New Orleans courtyard, safe from the throbbing world around it, and existing only for those who knew its secret or had the keys to its formidable gates.

  Rose and I sat on the bench together. She was dazed, silent. I said nothing. What was there to say? She was a nymph beside me in her white silk dress, and I could feel her heart beating rapidly, hear the anguished thoughts struggling to achieve some coherence in her feverish mind.

  I held her firmly with my right arm.

  We were gazing on this little wilderness of thick pink hydrangea and luminous calla lilies, of creeping moonflowers on tree trunks and glistening white gardenias that gave off the most intoxicating scent. High above, the sky shone with reflected light.

  They appeared as if out of nowhere. Fareed, with this radiant mortal boy in his arms. One moment we were alone, and then we saw them standing against the back wall, before the stately promenade of trees, and the boy—the young man—came towards us ahead of the dark hesitating figure of Fareed.

  Rose ran to him. She rushed towards him and he took her at once in his arms.

  Had I met him anywhere in this world, I would have been staggered by his resemblance to me, the bright golden hair, the way my hair had once been before the Dark Blood had lightened it and the repeated burnings had lightened it so that it shone almost white. That was how it had once looked, full and natural, like that, and this was a face I knew that looked at me now, a face that so resembled the boy I myself had once been.

  I could see my brothers in him, my long-forgotten brothers who’d died unmourned in the mountains of the Auvergne, bodies left to rot by a mob of peasants in those awful days of revolution and destruction and competing visions for a brand-new world. A raft of sensations caught me off guard—smell of sunshine on the haystacks, and the straw bed in the sunlit room of the inn, taste of wine, sour and acidic, and the dreamy drunken vision from the inn window of that ruined château rising out of the very rocks, it seemed, a monstrous yet natural excrescence, in which I’d been born.

  Rose released him tenderly as he walked towards me and I took him in my arms.

  He was already passing me in height, and sturdier and more robust than I’d ever been, a human child of modern times of plenty, and out of his heart there came a palpable generosity of spirit, a great respecting curiosity and willingness to know, to love, to be overwhelmed. He was totally without fear.

  I kissed him over and over. I couldn’t help it. This was such fragrant and flawless human skin, this, and these eyes that looked into mine hadn’t a particle of evil in them, and no conception of me or us as evil, and much as I couldn’t understand this, I warmed to it almost to the point of tears.

  “Father,” he whispered.

  I nodded, at a loss for words, and then murmured, “So it seems, and so it is. And the world’s never given me such a treasure.” But how weak these words seemed.

  “You’re not angry?” he asked.

  “Angry! How could I be?” I responded. “How could I possibly be angry?” I embraced him again, held him as tight as I dared.

  I couldn’t conceive of his life, it was impossible, and the images flashing before me were fragmentary and did not achieve a story that I could follow at all.

  Suddenly the Voice overpowered me.

  “Enjoy your moment!” said the Voice, seething with anger. “Enjoy it, because you’re not long to have many like it.” And it began to sing loudly an ugly Latin hymn of gruesome metaphors that I’d heard many a time before.

  I couldn’t hear what Viktor was saying to me. The Voice was unstoppable. I tried to cut it off but it was rumbling on and on with the hymn. Rose was standing behind Viktor, and he turned and put his arm around her. She was obviously afraid.

  I saw Mekare standing near. And Rose had seen her too. She was with Jesse and David and appeared bewildered but subdued—as white as calcite, her tangled red hair shimmering in the garden lights. Her gown was wrinkled and torn. Her feet were bare.

  David and Jesse led her towards the back steps of the townhouse, but she stared at Vi
ktor when she saw him, and though she still followed their lead, she slowed her pace. She looked at me and then at him. She stopped.

  There came that flash from her, that flash that Benedict had described, Benedict who was here in the garden now with Seth. That flash of Maharet and Mekare together, seated in some quiet and restful spot. I saw it. The Voice was jabbering. It was a green spot in sunshine, and the twins were clear eyed and young. Just for a second they both appeared to look at me, long-dead daughters of another spring, and then this was gone.

  “Can you see all this, Voice?” I asked. “Did you see that place?”

  “See it, yes, I see it, I see it as you see it, because you see it, yes, I see it, and I knew it and I was a spirit there! So what!”

  The Voice went on, roaring its curses, a lot of figurative ancient language that had little or no real meaning anymore. “A tomb!” he groaned. “A tomb.”

  And on she went into the house, the tomb, and then the miserable and weeping Benedict followed, not even glancing in our direction. Such a submissive and defeated figure, this Benedict, pretty like his maker, with sad reddened eyes, and walking with a modern demeanor, casually, without that sense of presence so effortlessly reflected by the older ones. You would have thought: Just a kid, just a student somewhere, just a boy.

  Seth stopped.

  “What do you want to do with him?” he asked me. “With them both?”

  “You’re asking me?” I said a little angrily. “Maybe we should decide that as a council.” I could barely hear my own voice over the Voice. “I swore only to give Rhoshamandes back his severed limbs, but after that?”

  “Kill them both,” said the Voice. “They failed me. Kill them cruelly.”

  “The others will accept your decision, obviously,” said Seth. “You’re our leader now. Why wait for a council? Give the word.”

  “Well, I haven’t really been anointed ruler yet, have I?” I said. “And if I have, well, I will call for a council before they’re sentenced to death. Keep them here alive.”

  The Voice railed.

  Viktor stood there staring at me as I spoke to Seth as if every little expression or nuance in my tone was of interest to him, absorbed him, transfixed him.

  “As you wish,” said Seth. “But I doubt anyone will question you if you terminate them both.”

  Terminate. Such a word. “That’s unfortunate, if that’s the case,” I answered. “And it will not happen that way.”

  So this was his concept of monarchy, was it? Absolute tyranny. Good to know.

  If he’d read my thoughts, he gave no sign. He nodded.

  And he and Benedict moved on.

  26

  Lestat

  Hostages to Fortune

  WE TALKED in the library for hours. At first, I thought the Voice would render it impossible with all his ranting and screaming. But I was wrong.

  It was a fine library, one of several in the three-part compound, and nothing innovative, only the same tried-and-true European decor that always warmed my heart. Walls of books to the plastered ceiling, books with fabulous titles including great novels and plays and classical histories and modern geniuses of prose—and the ceiling a work of art with its ornate running cornices and central medallion, and a chandelier of modest size and fine crystal casting a warm light over all. The murals were Italian, and slightly faded as if years of soot or smoke had overlaid them, but I found it better in some ways than the garish brightness of new work.

  There was the usual French desk in the corner, the computers and flat screens, and the inevitable oversized leather chairs gathered around an antique mantelpiece of gray marble, with two bowed Grecian figures, heavily muscled and all but nude, supporting the overhanging shelf. And the mirror, the inevitable mirror rising from the mantel shelf to the ceiling, very broad and high, framed in gold with a mass of carved roses at the very top. Very similar all this to the rooms and fireplaces I designed for myself.

  The fire was gas but it was beautiful. I’d never seen more artfully made porcelain logs.

  And we talked there, Viktor and I together for hours, and then Rose came because she couldn’t stay away, and no one had asked her to, but she’d wanted to give us this time.

  At first I did strain to hear him in spite of the antics of the Voice. But within minutes, the Voice grew bored or had simply run out of invective and begun to mumble almost sleepily and was easy to ignore. Or maybe the Voice began to listen, because the Voice did indeed remain.

  Viktor told me all about his life, but I still couldn’t absorb it, this child reared by blood drinkers, knowing from the earliest age that I was his father, looking at rock videos of me revealing our history in images and song. Viktor knew all those songs I’d written. When he was ten years old, his mother had gone into the Blood. This had been agony for him, to see her transformed, but he’d tried to hide it from her and from Seth and Fareed but there was no hiding things from parents who could read your mind. And they were his parents, the three of them, and now he had a fourth parent. He said he was blessed. He’d always known his destiny was the Blood, that with every passing year he came ever closer to being with his mother and with Seth and Fareed.

  I nodded to all this. I wanted more than anything to listen. He had a simple straightforward manner, but he sounded like a much older man than he was. He’d had very little time as a small child, really, with human beings, being educated directly by his mother and by Fareed. Sometime around the age of twelve, he’d started to have lessons on history and art from Seth, who tended to speak of the entire sweep of time in these matters, and often confessed what he himself was seeking to understand. Then had come painful years in England at Oxford where he’d gone as a prodigy and tried to mingle with other mortals, tried to love them and understand what they were and to learn.

  “I was never frightened by any blood drinker ever in any way,” he explained, “until this Rhoshamandes came, until he crashed through that wall. I knew he wasn’t going to kill me, not immediately, that was obvious, and as for Benedict, Benedict was as kind as Seth or Fareed.”

  The Voice remained silent. I felt keenly that the Voice was hanging on Viktor’s every word.

  “When I burned the towels in the shower and under the door, I drew Benedict out immediately,” said Viktor. “It was the simplest trick. He was in a panic. He’s not what anybody would call clever. I’ve understood since early childhood that immortals aren’t necessarily brilliant or cunning, or profoundly talented. They develop over centuries. Well, he’s gullible. He’s no nonpareil like Fareed or my mother. And that also makes him dangerous, very dangerous. He lives for Rhosh’s commands. The whole time he was locking me up in that bathroom, he kept assuring me I’d be comfortable, well treated, Rhosh assured it. Rhosh wasn’t cruel. Rhosh would free me soon enough. Rhosh and Rhosh and Rhosh.”

  He shook his head, and shrugged.

  “Putting out the burning towels was easy. The house wasn’t in the slightest danger. In fact I’m the one that sprayed the fires out with the handheld shower nozzle. He just stood there wringing his hands. He started apologizing to me, begging me to bear with all this, saying Rhoshamandes was only using me for leverage, that everything was going to work out and I’d be with you before dawn.”

  “Well, he was right about that much,” I said with a short laugh. “What about Mekare? What happened exactly when she came up the steps?”

  “I thought Benedict would die on the spot,” said Viktor. “If immortals could seize up and die of heart failure, well, he would have been dead. The door was open and she came down a kind of landing towards us and she was looking directly at him, moving towards him with a kind of sluggish gait. I mean it was horrible actually, the way she was moving. But then she saw me, and her eyes tightened on me. She went right past him into the bathroom. He had to jump aside for her. And she came towards me. Again, I’ve never been frightened of blood drinkers, never, and she was just a little older than Seth. The sheer whiteness of her skin, that w
as the most startling aspect of her. Of course I knew all about her, I knew who she was.”

  He was wondering at it again, shaking his head. I try to anatomize his expression. It wasn’t humility that he displayed, but rather a purity of heart that took things as they came without an obsession with self. I’d never been half as virtuous as he was when I’d been a young man.

  “I greeted her respectfully,” he explained. “I would have done that at any time. And then she touched me in the gentlest way. Her hands were freezing cold. But she was gentle. She kissed me. And that’s when he bolted. This didn’t register with her right away. I think she thought I was you. I think she thought I was you and she didn’t question how that could be. She looked at me like she knew me, but when she did look back and see that he was gone, she turned and moved away from me.

  “I waited till she was gone. I waited till she was all the way down the stairs and moving out the door. Then I went in search of a phone. I was going to call Fareed or Seth. Rhoshamandes had taken my phone. I figured it was somewhere. But I couldn’t find it. And the house had no landline. I could have used Benedict’s computer, probably, to reach Benji, but I didn’t think things through. I wanted to get away. I was afraid Benedict would be back at any moment, or she would come back. I didn’t know what to do.

  “I took off on the road. I was still walking towards the front gates of the property when Seth appeared.”

  I nodded. It was as I’d imagined. Benedict had been the worst choice of an accomplice for all this, as the others had said. But neither of those two, Rhoshamandes or Benedict, was inherently vicious. And it is a great fact of history that the most mediocre and well-meaning imbeciles can strike down the mighty with surprising effectiveness when there is such a huge disparity of souls.

  Did this make me more forgiving towards them? No. Maharet had died a shameful death, and I was in a rage over it, and had been since I saw the burnt-out rooms in the Amazon and the burnt remains. The great Maharet. I had to suppress this rage for the time being.