The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (331 page)

“Are you going to tell me who you are,” I asked, “and what you want, or am I supposed to ask questions and draw this out of you?”

“You know who I am,” he said in the same reticent, simple manner.

Something struck me suddenly. What was outstanding were the proportions of his figure and his face. The regularity itself. He was rather a generic man.

He smiled. “Exactly. It’s the form I prefer in every age and place, because it doesn’t attract very much attention.” Again the voice was good-natured. “Going about with black wings and goat’s feet, you know—it overwhelms mortals instantly.”

“I want you to get the hell out of here before Dora comes!” I said. I was suddenly sputtering crazy.

He turned, slapped his thigh, and laughed.

“You are a brat, Lestat,” he said in his simple, unimposing voice. “Your cohorts named you properly. You can’t give me orders.”

“I don’t know why not. What if I throw you out?”

“Would you like to try? Shall I take my other form? Shall I let my wings.…” I heard the chatter of voices, and my vision was clouding.

“No!” I shouted.

“All right.”

The transformation came to a halt. The dust settled. I felt my heart knock against my chest like it wanted to get out.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said. “I’ll let you handle things with Dora, since you seem obsessed with it. And I won’t be able to distract you from it. And then when you’ve finished with all this, this girl and her dreams and such, we can talk together, you and I.”

“About what?”

“Your soul, what else?”

“I’m ready to go to Hell,” I said, lying through my
teeth. “But I don’t believe you’re what you claim to be. You’re something, something like me for which there aren’t scientific explanations, but behind it all, there’s a cheap little core of facts that will eventually lay bare everything, even the texture of each black feather of your wings.”

He frowned slightly, but he wasn’t angry.

“We won’t continue at this pace,” he said. “I assure you. But for now, I’ll let you think about Dora. Dora’s on her way home. Her car has just pulled into the courtyard. I’m going, with regular footsteps, the way I came. And I give you one piece of advice, for both of us.”

“Which is what?” I demanded.

He turned his back on me and started down the stairway, as quick and spry as he had come up. He didn’t turn around till he reached the landing. I had already caught Dora’s scent.

“What advice?” I demanded.

“That you leave Dora alone completely. Turn her affairs over to worldly lawyers. Get away from this place. We have more important things to discuss. This is all so distracting.”

Then he was gone with a clatter down the lower stairs, and presumably out a side door. I heard it open and close.

And almost immediately following, I heard Dora come through the main rear entrance into the center of the building, the way I had entered, and the way he had entered, and she began her progress down the hall.

She sang to herself as she came, or hummed, I should say. The sweet aroma of womb blood came from her. Her menses. Maddeningly, it amplified the succulent scent of the whole child moving towards me.

I slipped back into the shadows of the vestibule. She wouldn’t see me or have any knowledge of me as she went by and on up the next stairway to her third-floor room.

She was skipping steps when she reached the second floor. She had a backpack slung over her shoulders and wore a pretty, loose old-fashioned dress of flowered cotton with long, white lace-trimmed sleeves.

She swung round to go up when she suddenly stopped. She turned in my direction. I froze. She could not possibly see me in this light.

Then she came towards me. She reached out. I saw her white fingers touch something on the wall; it was a light switch. A simple plastic light switch, and suddenly a flood came from the bulb above.

Picture this: the blond male intruder, eyes hidden by the violet sunglasses, now nice and clean, with no more of her father’s blood, black wool coat and pants.

I threw up my hands as if to say “I won’t hurt you!” I was speechless.

I disappeared.

That is, I moved past her so swiftly she couldn’t see it; I brushed her about like the air would brush her. That’s all. I made the two flights to an attic, and went through an open door in the dark spaces above the chapel, where only a few windows in the mansard let in a tiny light from the street. One of the windows was broken out. A quick way to make an exit. But I stopped. I sat down very still in the corner. I shrank up into the corner. I drew up my knees, pushed my glasses up on my nose, and looked across the width of the attic towards the door through which I’d come.

I heard no screams. I heard nothing. She had not gone into hysterics; she was not running madly through the building. She had sounded no alarms. Fearless, quiet, having seen a male intruder. I mean, next to a vampire, what in the world is as dangerous to a lone woman as a young human male?

I realized my teeth were chattering. I put my right hand into a fist and pushed it into my left palm. Devil, man, who the hell are you, waiting for me, telling me not to talk to her, what tricks, don’t talk to her, I was never going to talk to her, Roger, what the hell am I to do now? I never meant for her to see me like this!

I should never, never have come without David. I needed the anchor of a witness. And the Ordinary Man, would he have
dared to come up if David had been here? I loathed him! I was in a whirlpool. I wasn’t going to survive.

Which meant what? What was going to kill me?

Suddenly I realized that she was coming up the stairs. This time she walked slowly, and very quietly. A mortal couldn’t have heard her. She had her electric torch with her. I hadn’t noticed it before. But now she had it, and the beam came through the open attic door and ran along the sloping dark boards of the inner roof.

She stepped into the attic and switched off the torch. She looked around very cautiously, her eyes filling with the white light coming through the round windows. It was possible to see things fairly distinctly here because of those round windows, and because the streetlamps were so close.

Then she found me with her eyes. She looked right at me in the corner.

“Why are you frightened?” she asked. Her voice was soothing.

I realized I was jammed into the corner, legs crossed, knees beneath my chin, arms locked around my legs, looking up at her.

“I … I am sorry.…” I said. “I was afraid … that I had frightened you. I was ashamed that I had caused you distress. I felt that I’d been unforgivably clumsy.”

She stepped towards me, fearlessly. Her scent filled the attic slowly, like the vapor from a pinch of burning incense.

She looked tall and lithesome in the flowered dress, with the lace at her cuffs. Her short black hair covered her head like a little cap with curls against her cheeks. Her eyes were big and dark, and made me think of Roger.

Her gaze was nothing short of spectacular. She could have unnerved a predator with her gaze, the light striking the bones of her cheeks, her mouth quiet and devoid of all emotion.

“I can leave now if you like,” I said tremulously. “I can simply get up very slowly and leave without hurting you. I swear it. You must not be alarmed.”

“Why you?” she asked.

“I don’t understand your question,” I said. Was I crying? Was I just shivering and shaking? “What do you mean, why me?”

She came in closer and looked down at me. I could see her very distinctly.

Perhaps she saw a mop of blond hair and the glint of light in my glasses and that I seemed young.

I saw her curling black eyelashes, her small but firm chin, and the way that her shoulders so abruptly sloped beneath her lace and flowered dress that she seemed hardly to have shoulders at all—a long sketch of a girl, a dream lily woman. Her tiny waist beneath the loose fabric of the waistless dress would be nothing in one’s arms.

There was something almost chilling about her presence. She seemed neither cold nor wicked, but just as frightening as if she were! Was this sanctity? I wondered if I had ever been in the presence of a true saint. I had my definitions for the word, didn’t I?

“Why did
you
come to tell me?” she asked tenderly.

“Tell you what, dearest?” I asked.

“About Roger. That he’s dead.” She raised her eyebrows very lightly. “That’s why you came, wasn’t it? I knew it when I saw you. I knew that Roger was dead. But why did
you
come?”

She came down on her knees in front of me.

I let out a long groan. So she’d read it from my mind! My big secret. My big decision. Talk to her? Reason with her? Spy on her? Fool her? Counsel her? And my mind had slapped her abruptly with the good news: Hey, honey, Roger’s dead!

She came very close to me. Far too close. She shouldn’t. In a moment she’d be screaming. She lifted the dead electric torch.

“Don’t turn on your flashlight,” I said.

“Why don’t you want me to? I won’t shine it in your face, I promise. I just want to see you.”

“No.”

“Look, you don’t frighten me, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said simply, without drama, her thoughts stirring wildly beneath her words, her mind embracing every detail in front of her.

“And why not?”

“Because God wouldn’t let something like you hurt me. I know that. You’re a devil or an evil spirit. You’re a good spirit. I don’t know. I can’t know. If I make the Sign of the Cross you might vanish. But I don’t think so. What I want to know is, why are you so frightened of me? Surely it’s not virtue, is it?”

“Wait just a second, back up. You mean you know that I’m not human?”

“Yes. I can see it. I can feel it! I’ve seen beings like you before. I’ve seen them in crowds in big cities, just glimpses. I’ve seen many things. I’m not going to say I feel sorry for you, because that’s very stupid, but I’m not afraid of you. You’re earthbound, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “And hoping to stay that way indefinitely. Look, I didn’t mean to shock you with the news. I loved your father.”

“You did?”

“Yes. And … and he loved you very much. There are things he wanted me to tell you. But above all, he wanted me to look out for you.”

“You don’t seem capable of that. You’re like a frightened elf. Look at you.”

“You’re not the one I’m terrified of, Dora!” I said with sudden impatience. “I don’t know what’s happening! I am earth-bound, yes, that’s true. And I … and I killed your father. I took his life. I’m the one who did that to him. And he talked to me afterwards. He said, ‘Look out for Dora.’ He came to me and told me to look out for you. Now there it is. I’m not terrified of you. It’s more the situation, never having been in such circumstances, never having faced such questions!”

“I see!” She was stunned. Her whole white face glistened as
if she’d broken into a sweat. Her heart was racing. She bowed her head. Her mind was unreadable. Absolutely unreadable to me. But she was full of sorrow, anyone could see that, and the tears were sliding down her cheeks now. This was unbearable.

“Oh, God, I might as well be in Hell,” I muttered. “I shouldn’t have killed him. I … I did it for the simplest reasons. He was just … he crossed my path. It was a hideous mistake. But he came to me afterwards. Dora, we spent hours talking together, his ghost and me. He told me all about you and the relics and Wynken.”

“Wynken?” She looked at me.

“Yes, Wynken de Wilde, you know, the twelve books. Look, Dora, if I touch your hand just to try to comfort you, perhaps it will work. But I don’t want you to scream.”

“Why did you kill my father?” she asked. It meant more than that. She was asking, Why did someone who talks the way you do, do such a thing?

“I wanted his blood. I feed on the blood of others. That’s how I stay youthful and alive. Believe in angels? Then believe in vampires. Believe in me. There are worse things on earth.”

She was appropriately stunned.

“Nosferatu,” I said gently. “Verdilak. Vampire. Lamia. Earthbound.” I shrugged, shook my head. I felt utterly helpless. “There are other species of things. But Roger, Roger came with his soul as a ghost to talk to me afterwards, about you.”

She started to shake and to cry. But this wasn’t madness. Her eyes went small with tears and her face crumpled with sadness.

“Dora, I won’t hurt you for anything under God, I swear it. I won’t hurt you.…”

“My father’s really dead, isn’t he?” she asked, and suddenly she broke down completely, her face in her hands, her little shoulders trembling with sobs. “My God, God help me!” she whispered. “Roger,” she cried. “Roger!”

And she did make the Sign of the Cross, and she sat there, sobbing and unafraid.

I waited. Her tears and sorrow fed upon themselves. She was becoming more and more miserable. She leant forward and collapsed on the boards. Again, she had no fear of me. It was as if I weren’t there.

Very slowly I slipped out of the corner. It was possible to stand up easily in this attic, once you were out of the corner. I moved around her, and then very gently reached to take her by the shoulders.

She gave no resistance; she was sobbing, and her head rolled as if she were drunk with sorrow; her hands moved but only to rise and grasp for things that weren’t there. “God, God, God,” she cried. “God … Roger!”

I picked her up. She was as light as I had suspected, but nothing like that could matter anyway to one as strong as me. I took her out of the attic. She fell against my chest.

“I knew it, I knew when he kissed me,” she said through her sobbing, “I knew I would never lay eyes on him again. I knew it.…” This was hardly intelligible. She was so crushably small, I had to be most careful, and when her head fell back, her face was blanched and so helpless as to make a devil weep.

I went down to the door of her room. She lay against me, still like a rag doll tossed into my arms, without resistance. There was warmth coming from her room. I pushed open the door.

Having once been a classroom perhaps, or even a dormitory, the room was very large, set in the very corner of the building, with lofty windows on two sides and full of the brighter light from the street.