Prince Lestat (54 page)

Only once had there been a bad moment, an alarming moment. Benedict after binding her head securely in silk had backed off suddenly, almost stumbling in his haste to get away from her. He stood staring at her.

“What is it!” Rhosh had demanded. The panic was contagious. “Tell me.”

“I saw something,” Benedict whispered. “I saw something I think that she is seeing.”

“You’re imagining it,” said Rhosh. “She sees nothing. Go on, finish.”

What had that been, that thing that Benedict had seen?

Rhosh didn’t want to know, didn’t dare to want to know. But he couldn’t stop wondering.

When they’d had her securely bound like a dead one in a shroud, it had been possible then to leave that horrid place, that awful place that had been Maharet’s hearth and sanctum. Rhosh had had enough of looking through the storerooms, of looking at books and parchments and ancient keepsakes, enough, the desks, the computers, all of it. It was tainted with death. He would have taken the jewels perhaps and the gold, but he didn’t need these things, and he couldn’t bear to touch them. It was sacrilege somehow, stealing the personal treasures of the dead. He’d been unable to reason himself out of it.

When they were at the edge of the garden enclosure, he’d turned back, pulled the pin from the grenade he’d brought with him, and hurled it into the lighted doorway. The explosion was immediate. The flames raged through the buildings.

Then they had brought the silent burden to these shores, to a planned location obtained through the mortal attorneys with the least amount of delay, and put her to rest in a cool darkened cellar with its small windows soon boarded up by the ever-resourceful Benedict. Only the heartbeat of that bundled body gave evidence of life.

Benedict stood beside him at the railing of the deck. The wind off the Atlantic was deliciously cold, not as fierce as the winds of the northern seas, but bracing, clean and good.

“Well, I understand, you’ll be untouchable, but how can you maintain power over them, enough, say, to kill Benji Mahmoud before their very eyes?”

“What are they going to do about it?” asked Rhosh. “And suppose I threaten them that I’ll lie in the sun at dawn, as does happen to be my custom, by the way, and can be no more—unless I and they want the younger ones to be devoured by fire when my body, the Source Body, suffers that insult?”

“Would I die,” asked Benedict, “if you did that? I mean once you have the Sacred Core?”

“Yes, but I’d never do it!” Rhosh whispered. “Don’t you see?”

“Then what good is the threat? If they know you love me—?”

“But they don’t know,” said the Voice. “That’s the thing. They don’t know. They know almost nothing about you!” The Voice was fuming again. “And you can strengthen your friend with your blood, strengthen him to where he suffers from such a burning but not fatally! Why have you not given him more of your blood over the centuries? And then of course your blood will be the Source Blood and the strongest that there is, and you will feel the engines of power grinding in you with a new efficiency and fury—.”

“Leave this in my hands,” said Rhosh to Benedict. “And no, you might not at all die, were I to make good on my threat. Burn yes, but die no. And I will give you my blood.” He felt like a fool suddenly obeying the Voice’s orders.

“But you could never make another blood drinker,” said Benedict, “because if you did you wouldn’t be able to make the threat …”

“Stop talking,” said Rhosh. “I have no choice now, do I, but to follow this through! I must get Fareed to put the Sacred Core into me. Never mind all the rest. Just remember the instructions I’ve given you. Be ready at any moment for my phone call.”

“I am,” said Benedict.

“And don’t, whatever you do, don’t call me. Keep the phone ready. And when I call and instruct you to begin torturing the boy—that is, if I have to do that—then you must do it and they must be able to hear his screams through the phone.”

“Very well!” said Benedict disgustedly. “But you do realize I’ve never tortured a human being before.”

“Oh, come on, it won’t be that difficult! Look at what you’ve done already. You’ve taken to this, you know you have. You’ll figure a way to make him scream. Look, it’s simple. Break his fingers, one by one. There are ten of them.”

Benedict sighed.

“They will not harm me as long as the boy is in our hands, don’t you see? And when I return here with Fareed, we’ll deal with the goddess in the cellar, you understand?”

“All right,” said Benedict with the same tone of bitter resignation.

“And then I will be the One! And you will be my beloved, as you have always been.”

“Very well.”

Truly, with his whole soul, he wished he had not killed Maharet and Khayman. With his whole heart he wished there were some escape now from this.
Blood guilt
. That had been the name for what he was feeling now. Thousands of years ago as a boy on Crete he’d known what blood guilt was when you killed those who were your own, and Maharet and Khayman had not been enemies.

“Oh, junk poetry, junk philosophy,” sang the Voice. “She was going to plunge with her sister into the volcano. I told you. You did what you had to do, as moderns so simply put it. Forget the ways of ancient cultures. You are a blood drinker of immense physical and spiritual power. I will tell you what is sin and what is guilt. Now go to them and make your demand and leave your acolyte here to slice off the head of that boy upstairs if they do not give in to you.”

“When they find out—.”

“They know,” said the Voice. “Turn up your computer volume, Benjamin Mahmoud is telling them everything.”

And it was true.

He sat down on the couch beside the laptop with its glowing screen. The website of Benji Mahmoud now showed of all things Benji’s very own likeness, not in a still photograph but in a video. There he was with his black fedora and his sharp penetrating black eyes, his round face fiercely animated with the tale he told:

“Lestat is with us. Lestat has been to the jungles of the Amazon seeking the Divine Twins, the keepers of the Sacred Core, and Lestat has come back to tell the tale: the great Maharet has been murdered. Her companion Khayman has been murdered. Their remains were left in a shameful shallow grave, their house desecrated. And the silent one, the passive one, the brave and enduring one, Mekare, is
missing. Who has done these things we know not, but we do know this. We stand united against this wicked one.”

Rhosh sighed and sat back on the white couch.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Benedict.

Their house desecrated!

“Let them come together,” said the Voice. “Let them weigh their losses. Let them weigh what they stand to lose. Let them learn obedience. The hour of midnight has not yet struck. And by that time they will have come to realize their helplessness.”

Rhosh didn’t bother to answer.

Benedict started to question him again.

“Go see to the prisoners,” he said to Benedict and went back out to look over the sea and seriously consider drowning himself, though he knew it wasn’t possible and he had no choice now but to play this game to the finish.

G
REGORY HAD
to admire this enigmatic Lestat. Never mind that Gregory was in love with him. Who could not admire a creature with such perfect poise, such perfect pitch for what to say to each and every blood drinker who approached him, a creature who could lapse into the greatest tenderness with his mortal ward, Rose, in his arms, and then turn with such fury on Seth, the powerful Seth, demanding to know how and why he’d exposed “these mortal children” to such disasters?

And then how easily he’d wept when greeting Louis and Armand and his lost fledgling, Antoine, whom he’d long ago consigned to history, alive here and thriving with Benji and Sybelle. How considerately he’d held Antoine’s hand as the other stammered and trembled and tried to express his love, and how patiently he’d kissed Antoine and assured him that they would have many nights together, all of them, and they would come to know each other and love each other as never before.

“We must all come to the table and talk of what’s happening,” Lestat had said, so easily assuming command. “Armand, I say let’s do this in the attic ballroom. I’ll be there as soon as I’ve taken Rose safely down to the cellar and talked with her. And Benji, you must be there. You must shut down broadcasting long enough to be there, do you understand? No one can absent himself or herself. The crisis is
too great. Maharet, Khayman, murdered, their house burned, Mekare gone. The Voice is inheriting the wind, and we have to hold this tent together against it!”

Gregory was tempted to applaud. It was fireworks in the front hallway.

Armand had agreed at once as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do what Lestat wanted.

But wasn’t it what they all wanted?

And what a dashing and beautiful figure Lestat was. The James Bond of the Vampires indeed. How had he managed under such pressure to show up at Trinity Gate in a fresh and show-stopping ensemble of Ralph Lauren wool plaids and pastel linen and silk, with brown-and-white wing-tip shoes, and his full shining mane of blond hair—just possibly the most fabled head of hair in the vampire world—tied at the back of his neck in black silk beneath a diamond brooch that might have ransomed a king but likely not his son, Viktor?

The plaid coat was a long hacking jacket, exquisitely like a frock coat of an earlier time when fashion had been more daring and consciously romantic, and it fairly well concealed some sort of weapon, a large weapon that he carried—scent of wood and steel—without losing its beautiful shape and cut.

Oh, this was the blood drinker of
now
, the vampire of
now
, for certain. Who else could better grasp that
now
was the Golden Time for all the Undead, transcending all ages past, and who else better to take the helm at this perfect moment? So what if it had taken this crisis to bring him to himself?

Beside Gregory, Zenobia, Avicus, and Flavius evinced the same complete admiration and fascination, Flavius laughing softly under his breath.

“He is all that anyone ever said he was,” he whispered to Gregory.

And Gregory felt that giddy ridiculous feeling so many mortals have described over the millennia—of utter devotion to another so well expressed in the old phrase “I’ll follow him anywhere!”

And Gregory did feel that. Yes, I would follow him in whatever he decides to do and put all my strength, all my gifts, at his disposal. But didn’t all the others feel precisely the same thing? Hadn’t all the arguments and uneasy conversations stopped? The whole house had assembled in the drawing room, the hallway, on the stairs. Weren’t all united? Didn’t even Gregory’s beloved Sevraine and the inscrutable
and ever-diffident Notker the Wise stare at Lestat with the same complete submission? Even Lestat’s mother, slouching against the front door in her dusty khaki, was eyeing her son with a certain iron satisfaction, as if to say, Well now, maybe something will indeed happen.

Rose, poor Rose, poor mortal Rose, poor tender terrified Rose with her huge searching blue eyes and her thick blue-black curling hair. The sooner she was brought over the better. A mortal mind could be damaged beyond repair by what this girl had witnessed.

She was clinging to Lestat, like a shivering bride in her white silk dress, trying so desperately and selflessly to keep her weeping silent, and he, like a mighty bridegroom, held her in his arms, reassuring her once again as he gave her over to Louis. “Give me one precious moment, my dearest,” he said to her, “and I will be with you. You are safe now.”

Gregory stared astonished as Lestat gestured for his mother to step aside, and opened the front door. He went out onto the little portico and stared right at the young fledglings gathered three deep on the pavement in the deep shadows of the giant trees that crowded the narrow street, whose electric lamps had been mysteriously disengaged several nights ago.

A roar went up such as Gregory had never heard from assembled blood drinkers in all his life. Not even the old armies of the Queens Blood had ever roared in such support for a leader.

All this while, these young ones had defied Benji’s warnings, gathering hour by hour to watch the house, and struggling to glimpse the faces that appeared at the windows, scrutinizing each passing car for new arrivals, though in fact arrivals seldom if ever came by car, and those that did, managed to slide into the underground garage beneath the third townhouse of the assemblage.

Not a single immortal within the house had dared to acknowledge the existence of these desperate creatures, not for an instant, except Benji through the radio broadcast only and always urging them gently not to gather, and to please go away.

Yet they had come, and now they remained, irresistibly drawn to the only place around which they had hope.

And this bold bright gentleman vampire, Lestat, went right down the steps now to the pavement to greet them.

Reaching out, he drew them to himself in a huge tight circle, telling
them all in his commanding voice to be wise, to be careful, and above all to be patient!

All around Gregory, blood drinkers within the house moved to the windows to watch this absolutely unprecedented spectacle—the peacock prince with his dark creamy skin and impeccable clothes, taking the time to talk to his subjects, and they were indeed his subjects, the rambling, scrambling baby vampires all trying to assure him of their love, their devotion, their innocence, their desire for a “chance,” their pledge to feed on the evildoer only, to have no more quarrels, no fights, to do what he wanted, what he said, to have his love and his protection as a ruler.

And all the while, the iPhones were flashing, even cameras were flashing, and the taller stronger males were struggling to appear gentlemanly as they sought the front ranks, sought to grip his hand, the females throwing him kisses, and those in the back jumping up and down to wave to him.