The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (332 page)

The passing traffic illuminated it.

I saw her bed against the far wall, an old iron bed, rather plain, perhaps once a convent bed, narrow like that, with the high rectangular frame intact for the mosquito netting, though none hung from it now. White paint flaked from the thin iron rods. I saw her bookcases everywhere, stacks of books, books open with markers, propped on makeshift lecterns, and her
own relics, hundreds of them perhaps, pictures, and statues, and maybe things Roger had given her before she knew the truth. Words were written in cursive on the wooden frames of doors and windows in black ink.

I took her to the bed and laid her down on it. She sank gratefully, it seemed, into the mattress and the pillow. Things here were clean in the modern way, fresh, and so repeatedly and thoroughly laundered that they looked almost new.

I handed her my silk handkerchief. She took it, then looked at it and said, “But it’s too good.”

“No, use it, please. It’s nothing. I have hundreds.”

She regarded me in silence, then began to wipe her face. Her heart was beating more slowly, but the scent of her had been made even stronger by her emotions.

Her menses. It was being neatly collected by a pad of white cotton between her legs. I let myself think of it now because the menses was heavy and the smell was overpoweringly delicious to me. It began to torture me, the thought of licking this blood. This isn’t pure blood, you understand, but blood is its vehicle and I felt the normal temptation that vampires do in such circumstances, to lick the blood from her nethermouth between her legs, a way of feeding on her that wouldn’t harm her.

Except under the circumstances it was a perfectly outrageous and impossible thought.

There was a long silent interval.

I merely sat there on a wooden straight-backed chair. I knew she was beside me, sitting up, legs crossed, and that she’d found a box of tissue which provided a world of comfort to her, and she was blowing her nose and wiping her eyes. My silk handkerchief was still clutched in her hand.

She was extremely excited by my presence but still unafraid, and far too sunk in sorrow to enjoy this confirmation of thousands of beliefs, a pulsing nonhuman with her, that looked and talked as if it were human. She couldn’t let herself embrace this right now. But she couldn’t quite get over it. Her fearlessness was true courage. She wasn’t stupid. She was
someplace so far beyond fear that cowards could never even grasp it.

Fools might have thought her fatalistic. But it wasn’t that. It was the ability to think ahead, and thereby banish panic utterly. Some mortals must know this right before they die. When the game’s up, and everyone has said farewell. She looked at everything from that fatal, tragic, unerring perspective.

I stared at the floor. No, don’t fall in love with her.

The yellow pine boards had been sanded, lacquered, and waxed. The color of amber. Very beautiful. The whole palazzo might have this look one day. Beauty and the Beast. And as Beasts go, I mean, really, I’m quite a stunner.

I hated myself for having such a good time in a miserable moment like this, thinking of dancing with her through the corridors. I thought of Roger, and that brought me back quick enough, and the Ordinary Man, ah, that monster waiting for me!

I looked at her desk, two telephones, the computer, more books in stacks, and somewhere in the corner a little television, merely for study, apparently, the screen no bigger than four or five inches across though it was connected to a long coiling and winding black cable, which I knew connected it to the wide world.

There was lots of other blinking electronic equipment. It was no nun’s cell. The words scrawled on the white framework of the doors and windows were actually in phrases, such as “Mystery opposes Theology.” And “Commotion Strange.” And, of all things, “Darkling, I listen.”

Yes, I thought, mystery does oppose theology, that was something Roger was trying to say, that she had not caught on as she should because the mystical and the theological were mixed in her, and it wasn’t working with the proper fire or magic. He had kept saying she was a theologian. And he thought of his relics as mysterious, of course. And they were.

Again a dim boyhood memory returned to me, of seeing
the crucifix in our church at home in the Auvergne and being awestruck by the sight of the painted blood running from the nails. I must have been very small. I was bedding village girls in the back of that church by the time I was fifteen—something of a prodigy for the times, but then the lord’s son was supposed to be a perfect billygoat in our village. Everyone expected it. And my brothers, such a conservative bunch, they had more or less disappointed the local mythology by always behaving themselves. It’s a wonder that the crops hadn’t suffered from their paltry virtue. I smiled. I had certainly made up for it. But when I had looked at the crucifix I must have been six or seven at most. And I had said, What a horrible way to die! I had blurted it out, and my mother had laughed and laughed. My father had been so humiliated!

The traffic on Napoleon Avenue made small, predictable, and slightly comforting noises.

Well, comforting to me.

I heard Dora sigh. And then I felt her hand on my arm, tight and delicate for only an instant, but fingers pressing through the armour of my clothing, wanting the texture beneath.

I felt her fingers graze my face.

For some reason, mortals do that when they want to be sure of us, they fold their fingers inward and they run their knuckles against our faces. Is that a way of touching someone without seeming to be touched oneself? I suppose the palm of the hand, the soft pad of the fingers, is too intimate.

I didn’t move. I let her do it as if she were a blind woman and it was a courtesy. I felt her fingers move to my hair. I knew there was plenty enough light to make it fiery and pretty the way I counted upon it to be, shameless vain preening, selfish, confused, and temporarily disoriented being that I was.

She made the Sign of the Cross again. But she had never been actually afraid. She was just confirming something, I suppose. Though precisely what is really open to question, if you think of it. Silently she prayed.

“I can do that too,” I said. I did it. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” I repeated the entire performance, doing it in Latin.

She regarded me with a still, amazed face, and then she let slip a tiny, gentle laugh.

I smiled. This bed and chair—where we sat so close to each other—were in the corner. There was a window over her shoulder, and one behind me. Windows, windows, it was a palazzo of windows. The dark wood of the ceiling must have been fifteen feet above us. I adored the scale of it. It was European, to say the least, and felt normal. It had not been sacrificed to modern dimensions.

“You know,” I said, “the first time I walked into Notre Dame, after I’d been made into this, a vampire, that is, and it wasn’t my idea, by the way, I was completely human and younger than you are now, the whole thing was forced, completely, I don’t remember specifically if I prayed when it was happening, but I fought, that I vividly remember and have preserved in writing. But … as I was saying, the first time I walked into Notre Dame, I thought, well, why doesn’t God strike me dead?”

“You must have your place in the scheme of things.”

“You think? You really believe that?”

“Yes. I never expected to come upon something like you face to face, but it never seemed impossible or even improbable. I’ve been waiting all these years for a sign, for some confirmation. I would have lived out my life without it, but there was always the feeling … that it was going to come, the sign.”

Her voice was small and typically feminine, that is, the pitch was without mistake feminine, but she spoke with terrific self-confidence now, and so her words seemed to have authority, rather like those of a man.

“And now you come, and you bring the news that you’ve killed my father. And you say that he spoke to you. No, I’m not one for simply dismissing such things out of hand. There’s an
allure to what you say, there is an ornate quality. Do you know, when I was a young girl, the very first reason I believed in the Holy Bible was because it had an ornate quality! I have perceived other patterns in life. I’ll tell you a secret. One time I wished my mother dead, and do you know on that very day, within the very hour, she disappeared out of my life forever? I could tell you other things. What you must understand is I want to learn from you. You walked into Notre Dame Cathedral and God didn’t strike you dead.”

“I’ll tell you something that I found amusing,” I said. “This was two hundred years ago. Paris before the Revolution. There were vampires living in Paris then, in Les Innocents, the big cemetery, it’s long gone, but they lived there in the catacombs beneath the tombs, and they were afraid to go into Notre Dame. When they saw me do it, they, too, thought God would strike me dead.”

She was looking at me rather placidly.

“I destroyed their faith for them,” I said. “Their belief in God and the Devil. And they were vampires. They were earthbound creatures like me, half demon, half human, stupid, blundering, and they believed that God would strike them dead.”

“And before you, they had really had a faith?”

“Yes, an entire religion, they really did,” I said. “They thought themselves servants of the Devil. They thought it was a distinction. They lived as vampires, but their existence was miserable and deliberately penitential. I was, you might say, a prince. I came swaggering through Paris in a red cloak lined with wolf fur. But that was my human life, the cloak. Does that impress you, that vampires would be believers? I changed it all for them. I don’t think they’ve ever forgiven me, that is, those few who survive. There are not, by the way, very many of us.”

“Stop a minute,” she said. “I want to listen to you, but I must ask you something first.”

“Yes?”

“My father, how did it happen, was it quick and.…”

“Absolutely painless, I assure you,” I said, turning to her, looking at her. “He told me himself. No pain.”

She was owl-like with such a white face and big dark eyes, and she was actually slightly scary herself. I mean, she might have scared another mortal in this place, the way she looked, the strength of it.

“It was in a swoon that your father died,” I said. “Ecstatic perhaps, and filled with various images, and then a loss of consciousness. His spirit had left his body before the heart ceased to beat. Any physical pain I inflicted he never felt; once the blood is being sucked, once I’ve … no, he didn’t suffer.”

I turned and looked at her more directly. She’d curled her legs under her, revealing white knees beneath her hem.

“I talked with Roger for two hours afterwards,” I said. “Two hours. He came back for one reason, to make certain I’d look out for you. That his enemies didn’t get you, and the government didn’t get you, and all these people he’s connected with, or was. And that, and that his death didn’t … hurt you more than it had to.”

“Why would God do this?” she whispered.

“What has God got to do with it? Listen, darling, I don’t know anything about God. I told you. I walked into Notre Dame and nothing happened, and nothing ever has.…”

Now, that was a lie, wasn’t it? What about
Him?
Coming here in the guise of the Ordinary Man, letting that door slam, arrogant bastard, how dare he?

“How can this be God’s plan?” she asked.

“You’re perfectly serious, aren’t you? Look, I could tell you many stories. I mean, the one about the Paris vampires believing in the Devil is just the beginning! Look, there … there.…” I broke off.

“What is it?”

That sound. Those slow, measured steps! No sooner had I thought of him, insultingly and angrily, than the steps had begun.

“I … was going to say.…” I struggled to ignore him.

I could hear them approaching. They were faint, but it was the unmistakable walk of the winged being, letting me know, one heavy footfall after another, as though echoing through a giant chamber in which I existed quite apart from my existence in this room.

“Dora, I’ve got to leave you.”

“What is it?”

The footsteps were coming closer and closer. “You dare come to me while I’m with her!” I shouted. I was on my feet.

“What is it?” she cried. She was up on her knees on the bed. I backed across the room. I reached the door. The footsteps were growing fainter.

“Damn you to hell!” I whispered.

“Tell me what it is,” she said. “Will you come back? Are you leaving me now forever?”

“No, absolutely not. I’m here to help you. Listen, Dora, if you need me, call to me.” I put my ringer to my temple. “Call and call and call! Like prayer, you understand. It won’t be idolatry, Dora, I’m no evil god. Do it. I have to go.”

“What is your name?”

The footsteps came on, distant but loud, without location in the immense building, only pursuing me.

“Lestat.” I pronounced my name carefully for her—Le- stät—primary stress on the second syllable, sounding the final “t” distinctly. “Listen. Nobody knows about your father. They won’t for a while. I did everything he asked of me. I have his relics.”

“Wynken’s books?”

“All of it, everything he held sacred … A fortune for you, and all he possessed that he wanted you to have. I’ve got to go.”

Were the steps fading? I wasn’t certain. But I couldn’t take the risk of remaining.

“I’ll come again as soon as I can. You believe in God? Hang
on to it, Dora, because you just might be right about God, absolutely right!”

I was out of there like particles of light, up the stairways, through the broken attic window, and up above the rooftop, moving fast enough that I could hear no footfall, and the city below had become a beguiling swirl of lights.

In moments, I stood in my own courtyard in the French Quarter behind the town house in the Rue Royale, looking up at my own lighted windows, windows that had been mine for so long, hoping and praying that David was there, and afraid he wasn’t.

I hated running from this Thing! I had to stand there a moment and let my usual rage cool. Why had I run? Not to be humiliated in front of Dora, who might have seen nothing more than me terrified by the Thing and thrown backwards onto the floor?