"Well, enjoy it," said Gregory with a faint mocking laugh. "Have a wonderful morning watching her every move for the last ten years. As for me, I'm going out. These long winter nights exhaust me but it's worth it. I want to walk for a while on my own."
Gregory moved to the tall fruitwood secretaire a abattant against the wall, and tucked the deck of cards in its middle drawer. He turned to the door but then doubled back, and bending over Fareed he planted a kiss on his head.
"I love you, you know. I love your brilliance and your single-mindedness. I love that you're so patient with all of us."
Fareed smiled and offered a small nod. He reached up, found the hand he hoped would be there, and clasped it. But his eyes were on the task in front of him. He barely heard Gregory's footsteps as he left the room.
The great three-storied house was silent and seemingly empty around Fareed. The mortal servants were asleep in their wing. The pavements were deserted. Mortals in their surrounding apartments slept. There were faint threads of music in the air.
Fareed heard Gregory Duff Collingsworth climbing the stairs to the roof. In a moment the faint low thrumming beat of Gregory's heart was no longer audible.
The hair stood up on Fareed's neck. A rodent worked in the walls somewhere near him, behind the lacquered paneling. A small car passed in the street.
He was suddenly aware of how very excited he was, how very excited by the mystery of this woman, and how much he enjoyed it, no matter how disturbing it was.
He went at the keyboard again, fingers moving too fast even for his eyes, trusting to the feel of the keys and his unerring knowledge of them, the codes racing down the monitor, as he scanned the video surveillance system of Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals and digested all of its systems and limits.
He identified the live feed now from Dr. Karen Rhinehart's laboratories and found them empty. No surprise. It was early morning in Geneva as well, of course, only three hours away from Paris by train. Now he brought up the archive of dated tapes and soon found strong, clear footage from two nights prior that revealed the subject, Dr. Rhinehart, seated on a stool before a laboratory counter, making notes with what seemed an old-fashioned black fountain pen on a white pad. A mug of steaming coffee or tea sat beside her. She wrote in brief bursts, paused as if to think, then continued writing. Now and then her left hand moved through her long loose hair.
A preternatural stillness gripped her. Her few gestures were startlingly deliberate, and her long periods of immobility strange. When she moved her hand to write, nothing else about her moved, not the angle of her head, or the fingers of her idle hand. He was powerfully fascinated. Clone, droid, cyborg, replicant--the common vernacular words for human duplicates ran through his mind, detached from the various fictions that had engendered them.
A half hour of this footage passed and then he recognized an exact repeat of an earlier gesture, an earlier lifting of the coffee cup, an earlier rake of the left hand through the hair. The woman had blocked the camera with a digital loop. Of course. He fast-forwarded to confirm: the loop ran for the rest of that evening and night.
Well, they might be geniuses, the mortal employees scanning or storing this material, but likely the value of this system depended solely on someone seeking to retrieve a particular moment for a particular use. And likely nobody had.
A little annoyed, Fareed fast-forwarded swiftly through hours of footage, most of it of group sessions, group discussions, and work by young doctors who were not Dr. Rhinehart, and only now and then did she flash before the camera on her way across the screen.
"So she avoids the cameras," he whispered, "and skillfully, and when she does work alone in the lab, she throws up tape loops, and she's good at it, and nobody guesses." He went on scanning, and was just about to give up when he came across footage of the mysterious woman at that same laboratory counter, again with pen in hand. In this footage she was talking on her iPhone and of course there was no audial feed, or was there? He slowed down, searched, picked up the audial feed, amplified it, and now he could hear her voice distinctly, speaking in soft slow Swiss French.
It was nothing consequential, a plan to meet someone for a meal later, remarks about weather--a rich, pretty voice, distinctly feminine, with an easy subtle laugh now and then.
And he was furious suddenly that he would have to put all this aside for now and go to the crypts beneath the house. But he was growing cold as he always did near sunrise, as they all did, and it was maddening to leave this....
Because it was not--he was certain of it--not a human voice.
What could this possibly mean? No matter what Gregory said, he had to get to Geneva tomorrow night and see this thing, this creature, this artificial human, up close.
He rose from the chair and was turning to go when an alert stopped him. It was from Dr. Flannery Gilman, his blood drinker assistant and confidante, mother of Lestat's son, Viktor. It had to do with the woman's DNA.
"I found a match all right," wrote Flannery. "It's for a woman living in Bolinas, California, manager of a bed-and-breakfast famous on the California coast. All the material is from this woman's medical files in the Kaiser Permanente data banks. And the blood is definitely this Bolinas woman's blood. Signing off for the night, obviously, and will look immediately for your reply when I wake. But do you want Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals alerted? This is serious fraud."
"Get everything you can on this woman in Bolinas," wrote Fareed. "And forget the corporation. The security breach is the least of our worries. I'm heading to Geneva at sunset to have a look at this woman for myself."
The plain concrete-and-iron crypts beneath Armand's Paris house were like all the crypts in which Fareed and his brothers and sisters slept. They were unimportant to Fareed, who had been Born to Darkness in the late twentieth century when the blood drinkers of the world no longer valued coffins and heavily carved sarcophagi, and legends had no meaning anymore. He cared only that in his own private place deep in the earth, he was safe.
He had lain down on the narrow padded bed in the clean dry windowless cell and was about to close his eyes when a message jarred him, a telepathic message faint but garbled, stabbing at him, as if someone were tapping his temple with the tip of an ice pick but could not penetrate his skull. Danger. New York.
Well, those across the sea would have to deal with it, he concluded, his mind slowly clouding and losing all sense of urgency about anything in the whole world. Some night, Fareed would figure some way to free the entire vampire tribe from this daytime unconsciousness, this living death that came over them when the sun rose.
But for now, Lestat would have to deal with that alarm. Or Armand. Lestat was in America. Lestat had gone there tonight to meet his beloved Louis in New Orleans, or so it was being said. Lestat needed his old companion, Louis, all agreed. "He's our King James, needing a George, Duke of Buckingham," Marius had said. And Armand was in New York and had been for a month, making certain all was well at Trinity Gate. Well, they would take care of all this, Lestat or Armand. Or Gregory perhaps having a few moments left of consciousness. Or maybe Seth. They'd have to. Fareed's mind closed as securely as his eyes had closed. And he was gone. A dream had him, vivid, beautiful, filled with riotous sunshine, sunshine the way he remembered it from his home in India, and in this riotous sunshine Fareed saw a city, a great sparkling city of glass towers--Oh, this dream again--erupting in flames and falling into the sea....
6
Lestat
"A NON-HUMAN THING?" I asked. "A non-human thing that has killed a vampire and eaten its brain? You disturb me for this?"
"Well, yes," said Thorne, "when the message comes from Armand in New York. He wants to take this inhuman thing to Fareed and Seth in Paris."
"Well, that sounds like an excellent idea to me," I said.
Louis and I were walking uptown towards the old Lafayette Cemetery. We'd been talking for hours, talking about Amel and what it was like for me with Amel inside of me, and I was doing mos
t of the talking and Louis doing most of the listening. I didn't want to be disturbed. I wanted to talk to Louis forever, share with Louis what had been happening to me, and Louis was attentive, appreciative. This meant the world to me. But I knew Thorne and Cyril would never have approached if there hadn't been a good reason.
I took the glass cell phone from Thorne, and put it to my ear which always felt absurd and never would feel natural, but there was no getting out of it.
"What sort of non-human thing?" I asked.
Armand's voice came through soft, yet clear.
"Looks, smells, and feels just like a human being," he said. "But it isn't a human being. It's tremendously strong, I'd say perhaps eight to ten times as strong as a human. And it should be dead right now considering the blood I drew from it, but it is not dead. In fact, the blood is regenerating rapidly. It's in some sort of deep sleep, what Fareed might call a coma. It has a name, papers, and an address in England." He went through it with me. Garekyn Zweck Brovotkin. Fancy address on Redington Road, Hampstead. Keys to a Rolls. Passport, British driver's license, British and American money, and some sort of paper ticket for a flight to London at midday.
"And you're holding this thing as a prisoner?"
"Yes! Wouldn't you hold it prisoner?"
"I wasn't challenging you, just asking."
"I'm bringing it to Paris tomorrow for Fareed. What else can I do with it? I've sent out warnings. If there are others like this, we should all be on alert."
"I'll be there, tomorrow, in Paris, myself," I said. "I'll see you then and I'll see it."
"Louis is going with you?"
There was a great deal more to the question than any casual listener might have supposed. Louis and Armand were the pillars of the New York household at Trinity Gate. Louis and Armand had been together for almost a century long before that.
"Yes," I said. "I'm taking him back with me as soon as we wake." I waited.
I stood on the flagstone sidewalk looking at the distant white wall of the old cemetery. It was quiet and beautiful on this Garden District street with its giant black-barked oaks, and the dark silent multistory houses on either side. "I need Louis," I said.
Oh, the old entanglements, the old jealousies and defeats. But what creature in the world doesn't want to be loved for itself? Even a non-human thing that looked human might want to be loved.
"I'm happy for you," Armand said. Then, "This is serious. This being, whatever it is, it smashed the skull of a blood drinker and devoured the brain."
"But did you actually see this happen yourself?"
"Yes, I saw it all from the point of view of the victim. I couldn't get there fast enough. Remains have been confirmed. The brain's gone."
"And who is the dead blood drinker?"
"Killer, the old friend of Davis and Antoine. Killer, the one who traveled with the Fang Gang."
"I remember," I said. I sighed. I hadn't despised Killer. In fact, I'd liked him. But there had been something blundering and petty and "small time" about Killer. I hadn't liked the idea of his hanging about Trinity Gate. "What is this non-human thing made of?"
"Flesh and blood, Lestat, just like any human," Armand replied. He was becoming annoyed. "Cut the thing, it bleeds. But it's not human." He went on explaining. The blood was thick, good tasting, but it had a flavoring that wasn't in human blood. A flavoring. He couldn't do better than that. Benji had spotted the creature hovering around Trinity Gate. It had followed Benji. The creature had been muttering things about Amel, like a crazed human follower of the radio station, only he wasn't human. Benji called at once for a car and headed home, sending Killer to approach the creature and try to find out what it wanted.
"Well, that was likely very stupid," I said.
"Benji protected himself," said Armand crossly. "And Killer was the oldest blood drinker under the roof. No one else was here, except Killer and a couple of fledglings who'd recently arrived. Antoine had gone home to France when the sun set. Eleni had been with me in Midtown. I came as soon as I could. But I wasn't fast enough. And Killer was eager to go, certain he could manage the thing."
"Eleni," I said. "My old friend Eleni? Everard's Eleni?"
"Yes. Is there another Eleni? She's weary of Rhoshamandes and his fledglings sitting around gnashing their teeth. Or so she says. Look, we can talk about all this later. Holding this thing throughout the day will be a problem, but we're doing the best we can."
I didn't like the idea of Eleni being there. I didn't trust Eleni. I loved Eleni, true, from the old Theatre des Vampires. She'd been a veteran of Armand's Satanic coven under Les Innocents, who had come to join me at the theater, to be free. She'd become my correspondent during the years I wandered in search of Marius. But she'd been made by Everard de Landen under the authority of Rhoshamandes, and she'd been spending most of her time with this bitter enemy of mine and his other fledglings. But to whom was she truly loyal? Armand, who'd once made her a ragged and tormented slave of Satan, or the powerful vampire who'd ruled the household in which she'd been made? I knew Everard's heart. He never tried to disguise it. He loathed and detested the great Rhoshamandes. But what about Eleni? Rhoshamandes had been master of the coven in which she was Born to Darkness and learned her first indelible lessons of the night. Didn't like it. Didn't like it at all.
Louis stood a few feet away watching me. Undoubtedly he heard every word, but his face revealed nothing. He had a remote dreamy expression on his face as he so often did, but I sensed he'd been absorbing everything.
What have I to do with all this, I thought with irritation, but I knew perfectly well what I had to do with it. This was my life now, by choice, to be involved in all things, to be the one whom Armand called to report a comatose non-human imprisoned at Trinity Gate.
"Do you need any assistance from me now?" I asked Armand. "This is all fascinating, of course, but there isn't time for me to come to you."
"I know that. I'm letting you know for obvious reasons. Why do you behave as if I'm deliberately harassing you? Are you the Prince, Lestat, or not?"
"Of course, yes, you did the right thing. I'm sorry."
I saw Louis's faint smile.
"I'll see you tomorrow in the City of Light," said Armand. A beat. "And I am happy for you, that you're with Louis."
I sighed. I wanted to say we all love one another. We all have to love one another. If you and I and Louis don't love one another after all we've been through, well, then all our powers mean nothing, and our dreams mean nothing, and so we have to love one another. And maybe I did say this silently and he heard it, but I doubted it.
"I know," I said. "I'm eager to see you too."
I gave the phone back to Thorne. Where was Amel? Was Amel in New York? Did Amel know what this thing was?
Thorne jarred me out of my thoughts.
"If you gentlemen are determined to proceed on foot," he said, "it's time to head on back downtown."
7
Garekyn
HE'D BEEN LISTENING to them for about an hour. They'd tied him to a table, with some sort of steel cable. And they were anxious as to how to hold him through the daylight hours when they, obviously, had to sleep.
He was no longer astonished to be alive. It had been all too like his coming out of the ice in Siberia so long ago, the sense of waking from a long sleep. The Parents had promised that there was almost nothing in this world that could kill him, and he felt disloyal somehow to the Parents that he'd feared it was the end. The Parents...oh, if only he could remember.
The strongest blood drinker, the one who'd overtaken him and drained the blood out of him, was speaking. This was Armand.
"And if I put him in my crypt and he does manage to break out of it, then he will find me in one of the other crypts."
"Well, then, what shall we do?"
Steel cables. Strong all right, but was this vampire correct in saying that Garekyn had the strength of ten men? That's what Garekyn had heard him say in his phone call to the Prince. Th
e strength of eight to ten men.
If Garekyn did have that much strength, he'd escape from these cables as soon as they had gone to their rest. And he wouldn't waste any time breaking open their crypts. He had discovered exactly what he had come here to discover. He had seen it as Armand drew the blood out of him. Amel, the Core, Amel the spirit that did in fact animate them all. Amel was in this being Armand who had attacked him, and in the midst of the struggle, as Garekyn fought the blood drinker who was killing him, he had seen the city, unmistakably the city of Atalantaya, and not as he could ever have envisioned it, but from another perspective, a distant perspective, a godlike perspective as the city erupted in flames and slowly fell into the sea.
He locked these thoughts deep in his mind now, fearing their telepathic gifts, of which they bragged over the airwaves night and day.
What a brazen bunch they were to tell their innermost secrets to the whole world and trade on the credulity of human beings to see them as fantasy makers, role-players in an elaborate game, dedicated and fractured fans of vampire lore. But it made sense. Who would believe Garekyn if he told "the world" these pale fiends were living and breathing vampires? Who believed the ancient tale of Atlantis as told by Plato, which Garekyn had first read in Alexi's library in Saint Petersburg a century ago?
Even the Prince had not believed the one called Armand when he'd explained that Garekyn wasn't human.
"All right, listen to me," said Armand. "The thing's coming round. There's only one crypt in the house that can safely hold him, the one made for Marius. Now I'm going to see whether or not I can open it and close it unassisted and somehow secure the door from the outside. You stand watch, Eleni, and you, Benji, come with me."
Sounds of their retreat, down a passage, up a stairway, the quick steps of the young one, Benji, trying to catch up with the barely perceptible steps of Armand. Up out of this cellar into the house above and on across a wooden floor.
Silence. Only the sound of the female blood drinker breathing. Sounds of traffic, sounds of trucks on Madison Avenue, those big noisy trucks that make their deliveries to the restaurants and bars of the metropolis before daybreak.