The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (401 page)

That was the miracle, I realized, that a human could be brought to this higher temperature, and thereby give forth all of her sweet scents and even a strong invisible shimmer of emotions; it was rather like stoking a fire until it became a blaze.

The blood of my victims teemed in my face as I kissed her. It seemed to become living blood again, heated by my passion, and yet my passion had no demonic focus. I pressed my open mouth to the skin of her throat, covering the place where the artery showed like a blue river moving down from her head. But I didn’t want to hurt her. I felt no need to hurt her. Indeed, I felt only pleasure as I embraced her, as I slipped my arm between her and Marius, so that I could cradle her tightly as he continued to toy with her, his fingers lifting and falling on the tender little mound of her sex.

“You tease me, Marius,” she whispered, her head tossing. The pillow was damp beneath her and drenched with the perfume of her hair. I kissed her lips. They locked to my mouth. To keep her tongue from discovering my vampiric teeth, I drove my tongue into her. Her nether mouth couldn’t have been sweeter, tighter, more moist.

“Ah, then this, my sweet,” said Marius tenderly, his fingers sliding inside her.

She lifted her hips, as though the fingers were lifting her as she would have them do.

“Oh, Heaven help me,” she whispered, and then came the fullness of her passion, her face darkening with blood, and the rosy fire spreading down her breasts. I pushed back the cloth and saw the redness consume her bosom, her nipples standing rigid in tiny raisinlike points.

I closed my eyes and lay beside her. I let myself feel the passion rock her, and then the heat was lessened in her, and she seemed to become sleepy. She turned her head away. Her face was still. Her eyelids were beautifully molded over her closed eyes. She sighed and her pretty lips parted in a natural way.

Marius brushed her hair back from her face, smoothing the tiny unruly ringlets that were caught in the moisture, and then he kissed her forehead.

“Sleep now, knowing you’re safe,” he said to her. “I’ll take care of you forever. You saved Amadeo,” he whispered. “You kept him alive until I could come.”

Dreamily she turned to look up at him, her eyes glossy and slow.

“Am I not beautiful enough for you to love me for that alone?” she asked.

I realized suddenly that what she said was bitter, and that she was bestowing a confidence on him. I could feel her thoughts!

“I love you whether or not you dress in gold or wear pearls, whether or not you speak wittily and quickly, whether or not you make a well-lighted and elegant place in which I can rest, I love you for the heart here inside you, which came to Amadeo when you knew there was danger that those who knew or loved the Englishman might hurt you, I love you for courage and for what you know of being alone.”

Her eyes widened for a moment. “For what I know of being alone? Oh, I know very well what it means to be utterly alone.”

“Yes, brave one, and now you know I love you,” he whispered. “You always knew that Amadeo loved you.”

“Yes, I do love you,” I whispered, lying next to her, holding her.

“Well, now you know I love you as well.”

She studied him as best she could in her languor. “There are so many questions on the tip of my tongue,” she said.

“They don’t matter,” Marius said. He kissed her and I think he let his teeth touch her tongue. “I take all your questions and I cast them away. Sleep now, virginal heart,” he said. “Love whom you will, quite safe in the love we feel for you.”

It was the signal to withdraw.

As I stood at the foot of the bed, he placed the embroidered covers over her, careful to fold the fine Flemish linen sheet over the edge of the rougher white wool blanket, and then he kissed her again, but she was like a little girl, soft and safe, and fast asleep.

Outside, as we stood on the edge of the canal, he lifted his gloved hand to his nostrils, and he savored the fragrance of her on it.

“You’ve learnt much today, haven’t you? You cannot tell her anything of who you are. But do you see now how close you might come?”

“Yes,” I said. “But only if I want nothing in return.”

“Nothing?” he asked. He looked at me reprovingly. “She gave you loyalty, affection, intimacy; what more could you want in return?”

“Nothing now,” I said. “You’ve taught me well. But what I had before was her understanding, that she was a mirror in which I could study my reflection and thereby judge my own growth. She can’t be that mirror now, can she?”

“Yes, in many ways she can. Show her by gestures and simple words what you are. You needn’t tell her tales of blood drinkers that would only drive her mad. She can comfort you marvelously well without ever knowing what hurts you. And you, you must remember that to tell her everything would be to destroy her. Imagine it.”

I was silent for a long moment.

“Something’s occurred to you,” he said. “You have that solemn look. Speak.”

“Can she be made into what we—.”

“Amadeo, you bring me to another lesson. The answer is no.”

“But she’ll grow old and die, and—.”

“Of course she will, as she is meant to do. Amadeo, how many of us can there be? And on what grounds would we bring her over to us? And would we want her as our companion forever? Would we want her as our pupil? Would we want to hear her cries if the magic blood were
to drive her mad? It is not for any soul, this blood, Amadeo. It demands a great strength and a great preparation, all of which I found in you. But I do not see it in her.”

I nodded. I knew what he meant. I didn’t have to think over all that had befallen me, or even think back to the rude cradle of Russia where I’d been nursed. He was right.

“You will want to share this power with them all,” he said. “Learn that you cannot. Learn that with each one you make there comes a terrible obligation, and a terrible danger. Children rise against their parents, and with each blood drinker made by you you make a child that will live forever in love for you or hate. Yes, hate.”

“You needn’t say any more,” I whispered. “I know. I understand.”

We went home together, to the brightly lighted rooms of the palazzo.

I knew then what he wanted of me, that I mingle with my old friends among the boys, that I show kindness in particular to Riccardo, who blamed himself, I soon realized, for the death of those few undefended ones whom the Englishman had murdered on that fateful day.

“Pretend, and grow strong with each pretense,” he whispered in my ear. “Rather, draw close and be loving and love, without the luxury of complete honesty. For love can bridge all.”

In the following months, I learned more than I can ever recount here. I studied vigorously, and paid attention even to the government of the city, which I thought basically as tiresome as any government, and read voraciously the great Christian scholars, completing my time with Abelard, Duns Scotus and other thinkers whom Marius prized.

Marius also found for me a heap of Russian literature so that for the first time I could study in writing what I had only known from the songs of my uncles and my Father in the past. At first I deemed this too painful for a serious inquiry, but Marius laid down the law and wisely. The inherent value of the subject matter soon absorbed my painful recollections and a greater knowledge and understanding was the result.

All of these documents were in Church Slavonic, the written language of my childhood, and I soon fell into reading this with extraordinary ease.
The Lay of Igor’s Campaigns
delighted me, but I also loved the writings, translated from the Greek, of St. John Chrysostom. I also reveled in the fantastical tales of King Solomon and of the Descent of the Virgin into Hell, works which were not part of the approved New Testament but which were very evocative of the Russian soul. I read also our great chronicle,
The Tale of Bygone Years
. I read also
Orison on the Downfall of Russia
and the
Tale of the Destruction of Riasan
.

This exercise, the reading of my native stories, helped me to put them in perspective alongside the other learning which I acquired. In sum, it lifted them from the realm of personal dreams.

Gradually, I saw the wisdom of this. I made my reports to Marius with more enthusiasm. I asked for more of the manuscripts in Church
Slavonic, and I soon had for reading the
Narrative of the Pious Prince Dovmont and His Courage
and
The Heroic Deeds of Mercurius of Smolensk
. Finally, I came to regard the works in Church Slavonic to be a pure pleasure, and I kept them for the hours after official study when I might pore over the old tales and even make up from them my own mournful songs.

I sang these sometimes to the other apprentices when they went to sleep. They thought the language very exotic, and sometimes the pure music and my sad inflection could make them cry.

Riccardo and I, meantime, became close friends again. He never asked why I was now a creature of night like the Master. I never sounded the depths of his mind. Of course I would do it if I had to for my safety and for Marius’s safety, but I used my vampiric wits to gloss him in another way, and I always found him devoted, unquestioning and loyal.

Once I asked Marius what Riccardo thought of us.

“Riccardo owes me too great a debt to question anything I do,” Marius answered, but without any haughtiness or pride.

“Then he is far better bred than I am, isn’t he? For I owe you the same debt and I question everything you say.”

“You’re a smart, devil-tongued little imp, yes,” Marius conceded with a small smile. “Riccardo was won in a card game from his drunken Father by a beastly merchant who worked him night and day. Riccardo detested his Father, which you never have. Riccardo was eight years old when I bought him for the price of a gold necklace. He’d seen the worst of men whom children don’t move to natural pity. You saw what men will do with the flesh of children for pleasure. It’s not as bad. Riccardo, unable to believe that a tender little one could move anyone to compassion, believed in nothing until I wrapped him in safety and filled him with learning, and told him in terms on which he could count that he was my prince.

“But to answer you more in the way you ask the question, Riccardo thinks that I am a magician, and that with you I’ve chosen to share my spells. He knows that you were on death’s door when I bestowed on you my secrets, and that I do not tease him or the others with this honor, but regard it rather as something of dire consequence. He doesn’t seek after our knowledge. And will defend us with his life.”

I accepted this. I didn’t have the need in me to confide in Riccardo as I had with Bianca.

“I feel the need to protect him,” I said to my Master. “Pray he should never have to protect me.”

“So I feel also,” said Marius. “I feel this for them all. God granted your Englishman a great mercy that he was not alive when I came home to find my little ones slain by him. I don’t know what I would have done. That he had injured you was bad enough. That he had laid out two child sacrifices at my door to his pride and bitterness, this was even more despicable. You had made love to him, and you could fight him. But they were innocents who stood in his path.”

I nodded. “What did happen to his remains?” I asked.

“Such a simple thing,” he said with a shrug. “Why do you want to know? I can be superstitious too. I broke him into fragments and scattered those fragments to the wind. If the old tales are true that his shade will pine for the restoration of his body, then his soul wanders the winds.”

“Master, what will become of our shades if our bodies are destroyed?”

“God only knows, Amadeo. I despair of knowing. I have lived too long to think of destroying myself. My fate is perhaps the same fate of the whole physical world. That we could have come from nothing and return to nothing, this is entirely possible. But let us enjoy our illusions of immortality, as mortals enjoy theirs.”

Good enough.

My Master was absent from the palazzo twice, when he went on those mysterious journeys which he wouldn’t explain to me any more now than he had before.

I hated these absences, but I knew that they were tests of my new powers. I had to rule within the house gently and unobtrusively, and I had to hunt on my own and make some account, upon Marius’s return, of what I had done with my leisure time.

After the second journey, he came home weary and uncommonly sad. He said, as he had said once before, that “Those Who Must Be Kept” seemed to be at peace.

“I hate it what these creatures are!” I said.

“No, never say such a thing to me, Amadeo!” he burst out. In a flash I’d seen him more angry and uncomposed than ever in our lives. I’m not sure I’d ever seen him really angry in our lives.

He approached me and I shrank back, actually afraid. But by the time he struck me, hard across the face, he’d recovered himself, and it was just the usual brain-jarring blow.

I accepted it, and then threw him one exasperated searing glance. “You act like a child,” I said, “a child playing Master, and so I must master my feelings and put up with this.”

Of course it took all my reserves to say this, especially when my head was swimming, and I made my face such an obdurate mask of contempt that suddenly he burst out laughing.

I started to laugh too.

“But really, Marius,” I said, feeling very cheeky, “what are these creatures you speak of?” I made my wisdom nice and reverent. My question was, after all, sincere. “You come home miserable, Sir. You know you do. So what are they, and why must they be kept?”

“Amadeo, don’t ask me anymore. Sometimes just before morning, when my fears are at their worst, I imagine that we have enemies among the blood drinkers, and they’re close.”

“Others? As strong as you?”

“No, those who have come in past years are never as strong as me, and that is why they’re gone.”

I was enthralled. He had hinted at this before, that he kept our territory clean of others, but he wouldn’t elaborate, and now he seemed softened up with unhappiness and willing to talk.