Prince Lestat (53 page)

She got up and went to the great wall of glass to look out at the city, to let her eyes move through this glamorous wildwood in which life itself was teeming everywhere around her as surely as it did in faraway streets below, and only yards away it seemed there were darkened windows revealing smoky and ghostly offices and crowded bedrooms and living rooms, and rooftops lying before her with gleaming blue swimming pools and some with green gardens, perfect gardens like toy gardens, with toylike trees she felt she could reach out and pick up with her fingers, and all this stretching on towards the great distant shadow of Central Park.

I want to remember these nights always, she thought. I want to fix them forever in my memory. I want to lose nothing. When it’s done, when it’s decided and it’s over, I will write a memoir seeking to capture everything forever. When it’s happening it is too beautiful, too overwhelming, and you can feel it’s being lost with every breath you take.

Quite suddenly a deep dark mass appeared above her, something like a cloud forming and descending right before her eyes. In a split second it thickened and rose up in front of her virtually blinding her as she fell back away from the transparent wall.

A great boom sounded, a great terrible crashing roar and a clatter, and she felt herself falling and all around her came down a rain of broken glittering glass. Her head hit the hardwood floor. There were deafening noises, furniture being smashed, pictures and mirrors falling, and the loud cold wind was rushing through the room. Doors slammed. More glass was breaking. She rolled over on her side, her hair whipped against her face by the wind, her hands grasping for something, anything firm, to steady her when she saw the treacherous glass splinters all around her, and she began to scream.

She saw Thorne fly at a brown-haired figure clothed all in black who stood before the overturned and broken table. But the figure slammed Thorne away with such force he appeared to fly across the length of the room. Louis lay sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood.

Viktor came rushing towards Rose.

The brown-haired figure snatched up Viktor in one arm though Viktor was fighting against him with all his strength, and as Thorne rushed at the figure again, he grabbed Thorne’s hair with one hand and hurled him away once more.

For a moment this tall creature who held Viktor effortlessly in the grip of his left arm looked down at Rose and came towards her, but Louis rose up behind him like a great shadow and the stranger veered, spinning backwards and smashing Louis with his right fist.

Again and again, Rose screamed.

The figure rose off the floor, wrapping both arms around Viktor, and it went out through the great jagged hole in the glass wall. It went out and upwards and vanished into the sky. And she knew where that brown-haired one had taken Viktor, she knew—up and up, faster than the wind and towards the stars. Powerful as Uncle Lestan, unstoppable as Uncle Lestan, who’d rescued her from that little island in the Mediterranean so very long ago.

Viktor was gone!

Rose couldn’t stop screaming. She crawled on her knees through the broken glass. Thorne lay to the far right, his face and head covered in blood. Louis crawled towards Rose.

Suddenly Louis was on his feet. He lifted her in his arms and carried her out of the room, out of the cold lashing wind. Thorne was staggering right behind him, hitting the walls on both sides like a drunken man, blood pouring down into his eyes.

Louis rushed with her down the long hallway. She clung to him crying, as he carried her into the bedroom that was hers in this place and put her down gently, gently as if she’d break on the white bed.

Thorne clung to the sides of the doorway as if he might fall.

There were voices in the hallway, feet pounding, shouts.

“Tell them all to get out,” said Louis. “Call the house. We’re going there now.”

She tried to stop crying. She was choking. She couldn’t breathe.

“But who was it, who took him, who did it?” she sobbed. Again, she began to scream.

“I don’t know,” Louis said.

Louis wrapped her up in the white cover of the bed, cradling her, rocking her, kissing her until she went quiet.

Then he carried her out of the apartment and held her tight against him in the elevator as they went down to the underground garage.

Finally, when they were in the car moving uptown sluggishly on Madison Avenue, with Thorne in the front seat beside the driver, she’d been able to stop crying altogether as she leaned against Louis’s chest.

“But why did he take Viktor, why, where has he taken him?” She couldn’t stop asking, couldn’t stop.

She could hear Thorne in a low voice talking to Louis.

She felt Louis’s right hand around her forehead, turning her face towards him, and his left hand lightly touching her waist. He bent his head and pressed his ear against her neck. His skin was silky, just like Uncle Lestan’s skin had always been, cold, but like silk.

“Rose, Lestat’s come. He’s at the house. He’s waiting for you. You’re safe. You’re all right.”

She stopped sobbing only when she saw him.

He stood in the front hallway with his arms out, her uncle Lestan, her beloved uncle Lestan, an angel to her, timeless, unchanged, forever beautiful.

“My Rose,” he whispered. “My darling Rose.”

“They took Viktor, Uncle Lestan,” she sobbed. “Someone took him!” The tears ran down her face as she looked up at him. “Uncle Lestan, he’s gone.”

“I know, my darling. And we will get him back. Now come to me,” he said, his powerful arms closing around her. “You are my daughter.”

H
E WAS
in a rage. But then he’d been in a rage since he’d struck down Maharet, since he’d doubled over with the machete in his hands, confronted with what he’d done, and the ghastly realization that he could not possibly undo it.

And now that he had Viktor in his hands, which the Voice had so furiously urged him to achieve, he was more than ever boiling with rage, against the Voice, against himself, against the wide world in which he’d survived for so long and in which he now found himself trapped and certain of nothing except that he had not wanted this! He personally had never wanted it.

He stood on the broad wooden deck of this house in Montauk on the shore of Long Island—staring out over the cold glassy Atlantic. What in the name of Hell was he to do now? How could he possibly achieve what the Voice insisted he must achieve?

The word had gone out over the airwaves immediately that Viktor had been kidnapped. Benji Mahmoud had been cagey and brilliant: an ancient immortal had committed a dastardly deed (yes, the vile little vampiric Edward R. Murrow had used that term) in kidnapping “one cherished by all the elders of the tribe” and he had called to the Children of the Night throughout the world to listen for the malignant heart and mind of this ancient one, to discover this one’s evil designs and to call the numbers at Trinity Gate in New York as soon as the monster and his helpless victim were discovered!

Benedict sat in the spacious barren all-too-modern “living room” of this glorified peasants’ hut on this expensive coast only hours by car from New York staring at the screen of the laptop as he listened to Benji’s reports.

“Lestat de Lioncourt has arrived! There are now innumerable elders amongst us. But again, I caution you, Children of the Night, lay low where you are. Do not seek to come here. Let the elders meet. Give the elders a chance to stop the destruction. And search, search for this evil outlaw among us who has kidnapped one of our own from us. Search but take care. An ancient one can conceal his thoughts, but he cannot conceal the powerful beating of his heart, nor can he entirely conceal a low humming sound emanating from his very person.

“Call us with all reports. And please, I beg the rest of you, stay off the phone lines until the kidnap victim is found or until you have further reports from me.”

Benedict shut down the volume. He got up from the low-slung synthetic couch that smelled vaguely of petrol chemicals.

“But that’s just it,” said Benedict. “There are no young blood drinkers around here, none, they were all driven out of the New York hunting ground a long time ago. We’ve scanned this entire area. There’s nobody out here but us, and even if they do find us, what does it matter, as long as I’m standing right beside him when you make your case to Fareed?”

It struck Rhoshamandes again as it had in the jungles of the Amazon that Benedict had been displaying an amazing gift for battle and intrigue ever since this nasty business had started in earnest.

Who would have expected the mild-mannered and genuinely loving Benedict to drive his machete into Maharet’s skull at the moment when Rhosh was frozen with panic?

Who would have expected him to so handily carry the violent but helpless young Viktor to the bedroom upstairs and lock him securely in the large windowless bathroom, remarking so coolly, “Best place for a mortal, obviously, with all that plumbing.”

Who would have expected Benedict to have been so handy with hardware-store chains and padlocks to secure that bathroom prison with such simple and clever gestures, piling a store of wood and nails and a hammer nearby if further security measures were needed?

And who but Benedict would have outfitted the bathroom before-hand
with every conceivable amenity—scented candles, toilet articles, even popular magazines, a “microwave oven” for the cooking of the stacks of canned foods he’d bought, and heaps of plastic forks and knives and spoons as well as paper bowls and dishes. He’d even included a little refrigerator in the bath full of carbonated sodas and a bottle of the finest Russian vodka, and had thrown in several soft new blankets for the boy and a pillow so he could sleep “comfortably” on the tiled floor when exhaustion eventually got the best of him.

“We don’t want him to panic,” Benedict had said. “We want him to remain calm and cooperative so this thing can be finished.”

By day the boards and nails would make his escape impossible, and for now, when he became panicky, he could press the intercom to speak to his captors.

That he had not done yet. Perhaps he was simply too angry to utter coherent words. That would not have been surprising.

One thing was certain. Someone very powerful had taught this human how to completely lock off his mind from all telepathic intrusion. He was as skilled at that as any scholarly member of the Talamasca. And as far as Rhosh knew, no mortal or immortal could open a telepathic line to others without opening himself to intrusion. So that meant the boy wasn’t frantically attempting to send messages to others. And maybe he didn’t know how. The vampires who brought him up might have taught him many things, but not how to be a human psychic.

Rhoshamandes didn’t much believe in human telepathy anyway. But he had to stop thinking about this! He had to stop thinking about all the different ways this spectacular gambit might fail, and it strongly occurred to him that he ought to call Trinity Gate now and return the boy and throw himself on the mercy of the gathering blood drinkers!

“Are you insane,” said the Voice to him. “Are you simply out of your mind? You do that and they’ll destroy you. What in the world would prompt them to have the slightest mercy? Since when do blood drinkers have honor?”

“Well, they had better have some or this plan simply isn’t going to work,” said Rhosh.

Benedict knew Rhosh was talking aloud to the Voice. But he remained attentive, desperate to know what was happening.

“I’ll tell you this much on my honor,” said Rhosh aloud for the
benefit of Benedict as well as the Voice. “The very first thing I will do when I have the power is destroy that little Bedouin! I’m going to take that noisy, impudent little monster in my hands and squeeze the life and the blood and brains out of him. I’m going to drain him dry, and tear his remains into shreds. And I’ll do that in the presence of his blessed Sybelle and his blessed Armand and his blessed maker, Marius.”

“And just how,” asked Benedict gently, “are you going to seize and maintain power?”

“It’s pointless bothering with that question,” said the Voice. “I’ve explained myself to your starry-eyed acolyte over and over. When you have me inside you, no one can harm you! You will be as untouchable as Mekare is now.”

Mekare.

Without Benedict, would Rhosh have ever dared to attempt moving her? Again Benedict had taken the lead.

The night after the killing of Maharet, as Rhosh called his mortal agents to arrange for a domicile in North America, Benedict had gone off into the jungle to find Mekare a tender young female victim from one of the naked tribes. Benedict had put this frightened and utterly malleable woman into Mekare’s arms, the whole while whispering softly to Mekare that she should drink, that she needed the strength, that they had a journey to take, and he’d sat there patiently waiting till the silent monster had slowly wakened to the smell of the blood, slowly lifted her left hand as though it were an unbearable weight and laid it on the breast of the prone victim.

With lightning speed, she’d closed her teeth on the sweet little girl’s neck, drinking slowly until the heart was stopped, and could pump no more blood into her. Even after that she drank, her powerful heart drawing the blood until the victim was pale and shriveling. Then she’d sat back, eyes empty as always, her pink tongue licking her pretty lips slowly and efficiently. There wasn’t the tiniest spark of reason in her.

And it was Benedict who suggested that they wrap her, that they find the finest coverings or garments that they could and that they wrap her as if she were a mummy in those garments and then they might carry her north safely to accomplish their purpose. “Remember, Marius wrapped the King and Queen,” he’d said, “before he moved them from Egypt.” Yes, well, if Marius had been telling the truth in that old story.

It had worked. Her fine green robe of interwoven silk and cotton with its trimming of gold and jewels had been spotless, no need to change it. Only wrap her gently in fresh-washed sheets and blankets, slowly, slowly, binding her gently, whispering to her the whole while. It seemed she’d welcomed the soft silk scarf blindfold. Or she hadn’t cared. She hadn’t cared anymore about anything. She was way past caring. Way past sensing that anything around her was amiss. Oh, that we become such monsters, it was unthinkable. It made Rhosh shudder.