Rose released him tenderly as he walked towards me and I took him in my arms.
He was already passing me in height, and sturdier and more robust than I'd ever been, a human child of modern times of plenty, and out of his heart there came a palpable generosity of spirit, a great respecting curiosity and willingness to know, to love, to be overwhelmed. He was totally without fear.
I kissed him over and over. I couldn't help it. This was such fragrant and flawless human skin, this, and these eyes that looked into mine hadn't a particle of evil in them, and no conception of me or us as evil, and much as I couldn't understand this, I warmed to it almost to the point of tears.
"Father," he whispered.
I nodded, at a loss for words, and then murmured, "So it seems, and so it is. And the world's never given me such a treasure." But how weak these words seemed.
"You're not angry?" he asked.
"Angry! How could I be?" I responded. "How could I possibly be angry?" I embraced him again, held him as tight as I dared.
I couldn't conceive of his life, it was impossible, and the images flashing before me were fragmentary and did not achieve a story that I could follow at all.
Suddenly the Voice overpowered me.
"Enjoy your moment!" said the Voice, seething with anger. "Enjoy it, because you're not long to have many like it." And it began to sing loudly an ugly Latin hymn of gruesome metaphors that I'd heard many a time before.
I couldn't hear what Viktor was saying to me. The Voice was unstoppable. I tried to cut it off but it was rumbling on and on with the hymn. Rose was standing behind Viktor, and he turned and put his arm around her. She was obviously afraid.
I saw Mekare standing near. And Rose had seen her too. She was with Jesse and David and appeared bewildered but subdued--as white as calcite, her tangled red hair shimmering in the garden lights. Her gown was wrinkled and torn. Her feet were bare.
David and Jesse led her towards the back steps of the townhouse, but she stared at Viktor when she saw him, and though she still followed their lead, she slowed her pace. She looked at me and then at him. She stopped.
There came that flash from her, that flash that Benedict had described, Benedict who was here in the garden now with Seth. That flash of Maharet and Mekare together, seated in some quiet and restful spot. I saw it. The Voice was jabbering. It was a green spot in sunshine, and the twins were clear eyed and young. Just for a second they both appeared to look at me, long-dead daughters of another spring, and then this was gone.
"Can you see all this, Voice?" I asked. "Did you see that place?"
"See it, yes, I see it, I see it as you see it, because you see it, yes, I see it, and I knew it and I was a spirit there! So what!"
The Voice went on, roaring its curses, a lot of figurative ancient language that had little or no real meaning anymore. "A tomb!" he groaned. "A tomb."
And on she went into the house, the tomb, and then the miserable and weeping Benedict followed, not even glancing in our direction. Such a submissive and defeated figure, this Benedict, pretty like his maker, with sad reddened eyes, and walking with a modern demeanor, casually, without that sense of presence so effortlessly reflected by the older ones. You would have thought: Just a kid, just a student somewhere, just a boy.
Seth stopped.
"What do you want to do with him?" he asked me. "With them both?"
"You're asking me?" I said a little angrily. "Maybe we should decide that as a council." I could barely hear my own voice over the Voice. "I swore only to give Rhoshamandes back his severed limbs, but after that?"
"Kill them both," said the Voice. "They failed me. Kill them cruelly."
"The others will accept your decision, obviously," said Seth. "You're our leader now. Why wait for a council? Give the word."
"Well, I haven't really been anointed ruler yet, have I?" I said. "And if I have, well, I will call for a council before they're sentenced to death. Keep them here alive."
The Voice railed.
Viktor stood there staring at me as I spoke to Seth as if every little expression or nuance in my tone was of interest to him, absorbed him, transfixed him.
"As you wish," said Seth. "But I doubt anyone will question you if you terminate them both."
Terminate. Such a word. "That's unfortunate, if that's the case," I answered. "And it will not happen that way."
So this was his concept of monarchy, was it? Absolute tyranny. Good to know.
If he'd read my thoughts, he gave no sign. He nodded.
And he and Benedict moved on.
26
Lestat
Hostages to Fortune
WE TALKED in the library for hours. At first, I thought the Voice would render it impossible with all his ranting and screaming. But I was wrong.
It was a fine library, one of several in the three-part compound, and nothing innovative, only the same tried-and-true European decor that always warmed my heart. Walls of books to the plastered ceiling, books with fabulous titles including great novels and plays and classical histories and modern geniuses of prose--and the ceiling a work of art with its ornate running cornices and central medallion, and a chandelier of modest size and fine crystal casting a warm light over all. The murals were Italian, and slightly faded as if years of soot or smoke had overlaid them, but I found it better in some ways than the garish brightness of new work.
There was the usual French desk in the corner, the computers and flat screens, and the inevitable oversized leather chairs gathered around an antique mantelpiece of gray marble, with two bowed Grecian figures, heavily muscled and all but nude, supporting the overhanging shelf. And the mirror, the inevitable mirror rising from the mantel shelf to the ceiling, very broad and high, framed in gold with a mass of carved roses at the very top. Very similar all this to the rooms and fireplaces I designed for myself.
The fire was gas but it was beautiful. I'd never seen more artfully made porcelain logs.
And we talked there, Viktor and I together for hours, and then Rose came because she couldn't stay away, and no one had asked her to, but she'd wanted to give us this time.
At first I did strain to hear him in spite of the antics of the Voice. But within minutes, the Voice grew bored or had simply run out of invective and begun to mumble almost sleepily and was easy to ignore. Or maybe the Voice began to listen, because the Voice did indeed remain.
Viktor told me all about his life, but I still couldn't absorb it, this child reared by blood drinkers, knowing from the earliest age that I was his father, looking at rock videos of me revealing our history in images and song. Viktor knew all those songs I'd written. When he was ten years old, his mother had gone into the Blood. This had been agony for him, to see her transformed, but he'd tried to hide it from her and from Seth and Fareed but there was no hiding things from parents who could read your mind. And they were his parents, the three of them, and now he had a fourth parent. He said he was blessed. He'd always known his destiny was the Blood, that with every passing year he came ever closer to being with his mother and with Seth and Fareed.
I nodded to all this. I wanted more than anything to listen. He had a simple straightforward manner, but he sounded like a much older man than he was. He'd had very little time as a small child, really, with human beings, being educated directly by his mother and by Fareed. Sometime around the age of twelve, he'd started to have lessons on history and art from Seth, who tended to speak of the entire sweep of time in these matters, and often confessed what he himself was seeking to understand. Then had come painful years in England at Oxford where he'd gone as a prodigy and tried to mingle with other mortals, tried to love them and understand what they were and to learn.
"I was never frightened by any blood drinker ever in any way," he explained, "until this Rhoshamandes came, until he crashed through that wall. I knew he wasn't going to kill me, not immediately, that was obvious, and as for Benedict, Benedict was as kind as Seth or Fareed."
The Voice r
emained silent. I felt keenly that the Voice was hanging on Viktor's every word.
"When I burned the towels in the shower and under the door, I drew Benedict out immediately," said Viktor. "It was the simplest trick. He was in a panic. He's not what anybody would call clever. I've understood since early childhood that immortals aren't necessarily brilliant or cunning, or profoundly talented. They develop over centuries. Well, he's gullible. He's no nonpareil like Fareed or my mother. And that also makes him dangerous, very dangerous. He lives for Rhosh's commands. The whole time he was locking me up in that bathroom, he kept assuring me I'd be comfortable, well treated, Rhosh assured it. Rhosh wasn't cruel. Rhosh would free me soon enough. Rhosh and Rhosh and Rhosh."
He shook his head, and shrugged.
"Putting out the burning towels was easy. The house wasn't in the slightest danger. In fact I'm the one that sprayed the fires out with the handheld shower nozzle. He just stood there wringing his hands. He started apologizing to me, begging me to bear with all this, saying Rhoshamandes was only using me for leverage, that everything was going to work out and I'd be with you before dawn."
"Well, he was right about that much," I said with a short laugh. "What about Mekare? What happened exactly when she came up the steps?"
"I thought Benedict would die on the spot," said Viktor. "If immortals could seize up and die of heart failure, well, he would have been dead. The door was open and she came down a kind of landing towards us and she was looking directly at him, moving towards him with a kind of sluggish gait. I mean it was horrible actually, the way she was moving. But then she saw me, and her eyes tightened on me. She went right past him into the bathroom. He had to jump aside for her. And she came towards me. Again, I've never been frightened of blood drinkers, never, and she was just a little older than Seth. The sheer whiteness of her skin, that was the most startling aspect of her. Of course I knew all about her, I knew who she was."
He was wondering at it again, shaking his head. I try to anatomize his expression. It wasn't humility that he displayed, but rather a purity of heart that took things as they came without an obsession with self. I'd never been half as virtuous as he was when I'd been a young man.
"I greeted her respectfully," he explained. "I would have done that at any time. And then she touched me in the gentlest way. Her hands were freezing cold. But she was gentle. She kissed me. And that's when he bolted. This didn't register with her right away. I think she thought I was you. I think she thought I was you and she didn't question how that could be. She looked at me like she knew me, but when she did look back and see that he was gone, she turned and moved away from me.
"I waited till she was gone. I waited till she was all the way down the stairs and moving out the door. Then I went in search of a phone. I was going to call Fareed or Seth. Rhoshamandes had taken my phone. I figured it was somewhere. But I couldn't find it. And the house had no landline. I could have used Benedict's computer, probably, to reach Benji, but I didn't think things through. I wanted to get away. I was afraid Benedict would be back at any moment, or she would come back. I didn't know what to do.
"I took off on the road. I was still walking towards the front gates of the property when Seth appeared."
I nodded. It was as I'd imagined. Benedict had been the worst choice of an accomplice for all this, as the others had said. But neither of those two, Rhoshamandes or Benedict, was inherently vicious. And it is a great fact of history that the most mediocre and well-meaning imbeciles can strike down the mighty with surprising effectiveness when there is such a huge disparity of souls.
Did this make me more forgiving towards them? No. Maharet had died a shameful death, and I was in a rage over it, and had been since I saw the burnt-out rooms in the Amazon and the burnt remains. The great Maharet. I had to suppress this rage for the time being.
There was an interval of silence and the Voice railed at me that I'd better enjoy this little cozy tete-a-tete with my son because it might well be my last. But he was dispirited. This was all halfhearted.
Viktor had questions for me then about what happened, and when he started to talk again, the Voice went quiet.
I was rather reluctant to tell him what I'd done, but Rose had witnessed it so I did. "We're all human and preternatural," I said. "No matter how long we live. And few humans can bear seeing a hand or an arm chopped off. It was the best way to paralyze him, to shift the power in the room with one or two strokes. And frankly I suspect most blood drinkers aren't able to do that sort of chopping unless it's in the heat of battle when we're all butchers and fighting for our lives. I knew it would be a stalemate. It was a gamble, of course, but one I had to take. If Rhosh had fled ..."
"I understand," said Viktor.
He was in complete agreement. He had not wanted to play any role in the Voice's game.
The Voice was listening quite attentively. I knew this. How I knew, I wasn't certain, but I could feel the intensity of his engagement.
Viktor and I talked on a long time after that. He told me about his studies at Oxford and later in Italy and how he had fallen in love with Rose.
They were well matched when it came to gifts, Viktor and Rose. Rose had bloomed into a graceful and striking young woman. Her black hair and her blue eyes were not the sum of it. She had a delicacy of form and feature that I found irresistible, and her face was stamped with a mysterious expression that elevated her from the merely beautiful to a different and very seductive realm. But Rose had a vulnerability to her that shocked Viktor. Rose had been wounded and defeated in ways Viktor scarcely understood. This had apparently sharpened his attraction to Rose, his desperate need to be with her and protect her and make her part of himself.
It struck me how very strange it all was that she should come to be the mortal in this world that Viktor, given his origins, should love. I'd sought to protect her from myself, and my secrets. But this never really works. And I should have known that it would not. In the last two years, I'd kept away from her with the best of intentions, certain she must meet her challenges without me, and disaster had nearly destroyed her, yet she'd found herself in the arms of my son. I knew how it had happened, beat by beat, yet it still amazed me.
I knew what he wanted. I knew what she wanted. This Romeo and Juliet, so bright and filled with human promise, were dreaming of Death, certain that in Death they would be reborn.
Rose was cuddled up beside Viktor in the big leather wing chair by that time, and he was holding her with obvious affection and her face was white with exhaustion. She seemed about to faint. I knew she had to rest.
But I had more to say. And why should it be delayed?
I stood up, stretched, feeling something like a silent nudge from the Voice, but no annoying nonsense, and I went to the mantel and placed my hands on it, and looked down in the dancing gas fire.
It was almost dawn.
I tried to think, for decency's sake, of what life might be for these two if we denied them the Dark Gift. But this was pointless. Really pointless. I didn't know that I could live with such a decision, and I was certain that they could not mentally or spiritually survive such a denial.
Yet I felt compelled to ponder. And ponder I did. I knew what Rose was suffering now, blaming herself for all her many misfortunes, none of which had ever been her doing. And I knew how much she loved Viktor and how much he loved her. Such a bond would strengthen both of them through the centuries, and I had to think now in terms of our tribe, our species, being something not accursed, no, never accursed--a tribe that must no longer be left to sink or swim in a sea of self-loathing and haphazard depravity and aimless struggle. I had to think of us as these two young ones saw us--as living an exalted existence that they wanted to share.
In sum, my change of heart towards my own nature, and the nature I shared with all the Undead, had to begin in earnest right now.
I turned to face them.
Rose was quite awake now, and they looked at me not with desperation but with a quiet
trusting resignation.
"Very well then," I said. "If you would accept the Dark Blood, so be it. I don't oppose it. No. I do ask that the one who gives it to you be skilled at the giving. And Marius would be my choice for this, if he is willing, as he knows how to do it, passing the blood back and forth over and over, creating the most nearly perfect effects."
An immense change came over them silently, as they appeared to realize the import of my words. I could see that Viktor had a multitude of questions to ask me, but Rose had a quiet dignified expression on her face that I hadn't seen in her since I'd arrived. This was the old Rose, the Rose who knew how to be happy, not the quivering battered one making her way through the events of the last months with fragile and desperate faith.
"I say Marius as well for other reasons," I explained. "He has two thousand years and he is very strong. True there are others here who are infinitely stronger, but with their blood will come almost a monstrous power that is better understood when it is accrued over time. Believe me, I know, because I've drunk the Mother's Blood and I have far too much power for my own good." I paused. "Let it be Marius," I said. "And those who are older can share their blood with you and you will share some of their strength and that will be a great gift as well."
Viktor seemed deeply impressed with these thoughts, and I could see it was with difficulty that he questioned me.
"But, Father," he said. "All my life I've loved Fareed, and Fareed was made by Akasha's son."
"Yes, Viktor," I said. "This is true, but Fareed was a man of forty-five when he received Seth's blood. You're a boy and Rose is a girl. Take my advice in this, but I'm not unshakable on this point. Tomorrow we can make this decision, if you like, and it can be done at any time."
Viktor rose to his feet and Rose stood straight and confidently beside him.
"Thank you, Father," said Viktor.
"Now, it's almost dawn. I want you safely in the cellars."
"But why? Why must we be in the cellars now?" Viktor asked. He obviously didn't like the idea of being in a cellar.
"Because it's safest. You can't know what the Voice has done."
"That's very true," the Voice said in me with a laugh, a positive cackle.