They had both suffered the unspeakable assault. And Louis, too, must have experienced it, though he said not a word about it. Indeed, all the Undead throughout the Chateau had known some version of it. Or so it seemed. David had lost consciousness at one point. So had Rose. Viktor had stubbornly clung to consciousness determined to observe it.
"I made it into colors," Viktor said to me now. "I saw the pain in red and yellow, and when it was at its worst, it was pure white. I couldn't imagine what had happened. I couldn't. And no one came out of the Council Chamber to tell us. And we didn't dare move. Louis was holding Rose when it all happened. I wanted to hold her. I couldn't hold her."
Louis sat in a chair nearby, quietly resplendent in his Lestat-chosen clothes, the inevitable dark blue velvet jacket and the layers of tiny, subtle lace at his throat, and the emerald shining on his finger. His boots looked like onyx.
Inside me, Amel said: "I didn't mean to make the pain, I didn't mean for there to be any pain; I couldn't stop the pain. The pain was never the point."
This was the first time he'd spoken to me since I had awakened. He hadn't been there for the first hour while I lay obediently in my coffin bed of satin, unable to risk the last rays of the sun above.
I spoke to him silently. "What do you want now?" I asked.
"Want?" The long sigh, a sigh so distinctly his I would have known it was his sigh if I'd heard it amid a multitude of sighs. "Want." Not a question. Just a remark. Silence. The fire crackling behind the brass fireplace screen.
The room swam in my sight. A chamber fit for a prince.
"Listen to me, all of you," I said. "He didn't mean for there to be pain. He will try very hard never to cause such pain again."
Viktor nodded.
Rose stirred against my shoulder. "Even if it has been only for half a year," she said, "it has been a lifetime."
"Don't talk like that," said Viktor. "What, are we holding a funeral for ourselves before we're even dead?" He looked at me. "Father, you are not going to allow these Replimoids to destroy us!"
He stood up, facing me, his arms folded. Powerful shoulders, fine body. No father in the world ever asked for a finer son. "Throughout the Chateau," he said, "everyone is grim! How can they be so grim?"
I nodded that I understood what he was saying, but I had no words.
"My mother felt the pain," he said. "She called from Paris. It must have been felt all over the world. Benedict and Rhoshamandes must have felt it. I wish I knew how many of us there are in the whole world."
"No one knows that, not even Amel," I said.
Little pulse at the back of my neck, little spasm in the blood vessels under the skin of my temples.
I couldn't stop seeing Mekare's empty shell of a body. Was it all luracastria? And does the subatomic luracastria transform the cells to a more resilient and ever-perfecting luracastria that becomes at last immune to the sun, almost entirely immune, except for me, the host of the brain of Amel?
Inside me, he made no response to this.
Carefully cradling Rose in my arms, I rose to my feet and placed her carefully on the settee. I kissed the top of her head.
"Whatever happens," I said as I looked from her to Viktor and finally to Louis, "I will fight for us and who we are. We are the strange flowers of this entity, but it is through us that he's discovered himself, and he knows that I love him, and I love him all the more with every discovery about him, and I know that he must love us, must know--."
Love you.
"And there is no reason," I went on, "for this to end for us. There is no way right now that Kapetria or the other Replimoids could conceivably want it to end for us; they are not waiting with scalpels in hand to free him from me because they have no place to put him."
This is true.
"Now, I'm going to go back upstairs and work with the others towards some sort of solution."
"Where have they gone?" Louis asked. "When I woke, I was told some of them left the village at about two o'clock, and that the others remain here to await some action against Rhoshamandes."
"That's correct," I said. "Twelve of them left. Twelve. And the elder four remain."
"You mean they increased their numbers in the space of one day?" asked Louis.
"Apparently," I said. "I suspect each one of them generated another. That would make a total of sixteen. Subtract the four elders and you have the twelve who left, two of whom were women, and all the rest males. I was getting word on all this earlier while I was still in the crypt."
I could see the mingled revulsion and alarm in their faces.
"They don't suffer anything when they multiply, do they?" asked Rose. "They simply do it."
"How can we know?" I asked. "But what is the point of becoming alarmed about this? The fact is they could have done this anytime easily. What do they require but a safe room in which the process can take place?"
I had thought when I first awakened that it would be our task to communicate what had been said in the conference room to others within the Court, but Marius and Gregory had already done this. And the news had been traveling fast.
"There are other things for us to talk about now," I said. "Gregory, Seth, Teskhamen, and Sevraine have gone to find Rhoshamandes. They left before I even opened my eyes because they wake sooner than I wake. Arion soon followed. So did Allesandra, and Everard de Landen, and Eleni. These are Rhosh's fledglings, as you know."
"But you didn't give your permission for this, did you?" asked Louis. It was asked in such a neutral way that I couldn't interpret it for or against.
"No," I said. "Maybe they've gone to lay down the law that Rhoshamandes cannot harm the Replimoids any more than he can seek to harm us."
They seemed to accept this, and I sensed as I had so often in the last six months that everyone, near everyone, expected me to articulate certain things, and when I did articulate them, there was inevitable relief for the moment.
"I see no way out for Rhoshamandes," said Louis in a soft voice. He wasn't challenging me, just reflecting.
"Well, there's at least a chance for peace," said Rose. She wiped her hair out of her eyes, and stared for a moment at her hand, at her fingernails. Her fingernails were the only real giveaway right now that she was preternatural. They were shining. She couldn't help but look at them, be fascinated by their sheen. Luracastria.
"A chance, yes," said Viktor, "but frankly I wish that Rhoshamandes was no more. Don't we have enough to worry about now without him?"
"It's time for me to show myself and do what I can to calm the others," I said. "I have to go out into the ballroom, no choice."
"We'll go with you," Louis said.
I headed out and through the long series of connective salons which stood between me and the ballroom of this my glorified lair. The music was playing as always, and this evening it was Sybelle at the harpsichord and Antoine conducting and Notker's singers chanting in a monosyllabic delirium--in a riotous waltz spinning off of Camille Saint-Saens's "Danse Macabre," carrying the melodies to savage heights.
When I stepped into the room, I saw it was packed, and almost every single blood drinker was dancing, either alone or with a partner or a ring of partners. Only a few sat here and there, some caught up in the music as if in a trance. At least a hundred newcomers or recent comers were in the crowd, and if there was any panic over the Replimoids, it certainly was not visible to me. Yielding to the music, yielding to the dance, that is what mattered in the ballroom. Faces brightened as they saw me, bows as they saw me, salutes from the ragged and the bejeweled.
At once, the gorgeously attired Zenobia took my hand and moved out on the dance floor.
"I'm so grateful that Marius has stayed behind with us," she said. She was delicate of face and build and her fine shimmering black hair was artfully threaded with ropes of pearls. Eyes that had gazed on Byzantium, eyes that had seen Hagia Sophia in all her glory.
"I'm glad too," I said. "But why did he?"
"They put it t
his way," said Zenobia. "Some of them might not return from their visit to Rhoshamandes, so it was imperative that, if things went wrong, there be strong ones here, here to help you on your right and your left." Such a sweet voice, speaking English with a heavy accent that gave it a distinctive charm.
"I see," I said. "And Avicus?"
"Dancing," she said with a quick smile. She made a graceful gesture with her small hand that meant "somewhere here." She was as lovely as Marius had described her when he'd first encountered her in Constantinople so many centuries ago. And I found it especially enticing that she wore finely tailored men's clothes--slim-waisted jacket with sequined lapels, tight shimmering pants, a silk shirt of brilliant turquoise.
We were turning in wild circles before I knew it, and then I was passed by her to the lovely brown-haired Chrysanthe in a graceful swirling white gown with diamonds on her breast that were blinding. The music was driving towards a frenzy.
"And from Gregory? Have you had any word?" I asked because surely her Blood Spouse would have let her know what he might be keeping from the rest of us.
"I've heard nothing," she said. "But I'm not afraid. Yet I won't rest easy till he returns. I wanted to go with them. But Gregory wouldn't hear of it. None of them would hear of it."
"I should be with them," I said. But the others had been completely against it. Why wouldn't Rhoshamandes on the precipice strike out at me and thereby seek to destroy all of us?
The dancing continued to be dizzyingly fast. I caught glimpses of Davis and Arjun playing instruments in the orchestra, Davis the oboe this time, and Arjun the violin, and there was Notker the Wise himself singing with his choir of male and female soprano voices, and Antoine conducting so fiercely it was a dance in itself.
There was Marius in his long red-belted tunic sitting on the sidelines in fast conversation with Pandora, and Gremt Stryker Knollys, the spirit incarnate, staring at me and watching my every move as David Talbot sat beside him, obviously talking to him, and leaving him unmoved. Gremt needing me, calling to me silently without a visible sign.
"Forgive me," I said to Chrysanthe. "There are things I have to do."
She nodded that she understood. But I held her hand as I motioned for David to come forward, and then I delivered her now into his gentlemanly arms. I headed in the direction of Gremt. And when Gremt saw this he rose and moved towards the open doors that led to a stone terrace. Did the young vampires think he was a vampire? Did the old vampires despise him because the Talamasca, their age-old stalker, had been founded by him? I could have spent every single night at Court talking to new blood drinkers, or encountering old ones who were forever arriving, it seemed, to put to rest the "exaggerated" rumors of their demise. Please, Quinn, my beloved Quinn, some night, if we have many nights left, come walking through these doors.
Gremt wasn't trying to avoid me. Rather, as he glanced over his shoulder, he appeared to be asking me to follow him outside.
The air was freezing and the terrace was covered in the snow, but the sky was remarkably clear and clean, and the snow crunched and crackled under my feet because it was frozen.
Gremt stood at the railing, and looked out over the village below. This terrace had not existed in my time, but had been added to the Chateau by my workers, and it gave the finest view of the village with its winding street and dimly lighted tavern and townhouses. Curfew was in effect for the humans of the village, but going from and coming to the tavern was allowed, and I could see furtive figures down there on the fresh-swept pavers, and some lingering against the wall like dark ghosts gazing up at the Chateau, and perhaps at us as we stood side by side, though mortal eyes couldn't have seen me clasp Gremt's hand.
Kapetria and her kindred Replimoids waited in the inn down there for word on Roland and Rhoshamandes--the re-creation of the inn in which, centuries ago, I'd drunk myself sick with my lover Nicolas and first confronted my mortality and gone out of my head.
Gremt's hand. So warm, so human. He was the picture of dignity gazing out, silken hair as well groomed as that of a Greek statue, his tall formidable body clothed in the long black clerical-looking thawb, a garment he apparently liked very much. And what were his thoughts tonight? Why couldn't I read his mind or the minds of the Replimoids? So be it. He'd tell me when he was ready just what Kapetria's revelations had meant to him. They must have shaken him to the root.
I caught the scent of blood as if it were something Gremt could release at will, and I heard the tripping of his mysterious heart beneath it, and felt the pulse in his wrist.
Innocent blood, there came that suggestion again, that whisper from Amel in a voice that didn't need words. His blood, yes, now. My mouth was tasting blood. I want it, I want it, his blood.
"Is this what you want?" I asked Gremt. "You want me to do what I did with her?"
"I want to know what you taste and what you see when you drink the blood of this body," he said in a muted and anguished voice. "What do you think this Replimoid woman might tell me about what I've done--how I've incarnated?" So that meant far more to him now than the revelations about Amel.
"Maybe she can tell us all plenty," I said. "And maybe she can tell us things we don't want to know. But she's going soon, that's the word, and nobody can persuade her to remain. She and her kindred will go--just as soon as they know that Roland and Rhoshamandes are no longer a threat."
Amel was goading me. My thirst was unbearable. And once more he spoke of innocent blood.
What's so delicious about innocent blood? What makes it like spring blossoms falling apart in your hands, or a bird fluttering in the prison of your fingers, or baby skin, or women's breasts?
Behind us, the music and light contrived to pull a golden veil over the ballroom. The raw impassioned voice of a violin broke loose from the desperate currents of the waltz and sang, as violins always do, of loneliness. Was that Arjun or had Antoine taken up his fiddle?
I moved Gremt off across the hard crush of the snow until we were swallowed by the shadows of a corner. The village was not in view because we were too far from the edge, and the night above was so clear that the stars seemed a thousand times their usual number. The snow shone as white as the moon. I could see it streaked and gleaming on the forested mountains all around us, and see it trimming the battlements and see the flecks of it in Gremt's hair.
This body was as beautiful to me as any I'd ever embraced and Amel was singing with the waltz so low I could scarcely hear him. I moved Gremt's soft black hair back from his neck, my left hand taking hold of his strong right arm, and then I went in, wondering just what might happen to this contrived body under such an assault. Had he ever let anyone else do this? Certainly Teskhamen, his partner in the Talamasca, had done this. No. Never. The blood gushed so fast and so hard I felt it wet on my lips and on my face as never happens, but I couldn't turn back, it was coming too fast, and the heart was sounding with the regularity of a fire bell.
Sweet, luscious blood, blood with salt, blood with all that blood is meant to be, and his mind broke open like the golden meat of a peach in the old days when I was alive and loving the summer fruit, the intoxicating sweetness of the fresh fruit from the trees in the village, right here, this village, me and Nicki lying on a haystack, eating fresh fruit till our lips were sore.
I saw a firmament of stars and a great war of vaporous beings faceless and howling and battling one another, with broken phrases and taunts and cries of pain, and then the earth below with its great expanses of black water shining in the light of Heaven and the land planted with a thousand clusters of man-made lights and shimmering roofs and thin spidery roads, and the wind roared in my ears, and we were Gremt, both of us, Gremt walking on one of those roads, walking with palpable steps, and when we turned, out of the great dark woods around us came a stinging torrent of freezing air and dead leaves that hit us full force like a rain of nails. Anger, anger everywhere we turned, the anger of the spirits, and then he was standing before me and he had his arms out, and he a
sked, Am I flesh and blood? Am I? What am I? The image wavered, weakened, dimmed. Dear God, was he dying? It took all my strength to draw back. Amel cried out and hissed and there came the pain again, the pain in my hands as he tried to force me to hold on and the pain shooting up the back of my neck. Gremt fell down into the snow.
Stop it, damn you, stop it, or I swear it, I will surrender you to the prison of a vessel from which you cannot hurt us!
It was finished. Nothing vanishes quite like pain--when pain does vanish, that is. Because most of the time pain never does.
I knelt down beside Gremt. He was drawn and almost as white as the snow, and his eyes were half-mast and gleaming the way the eyes of an animal can gleam when the animal's dead.
"Gremt!" I turned his head towards me with both hands. Warm, warm with life, warm with the will to live.
Slowly his eyes grew wide and clear.
For an endless moment we were together in silence. Snow fell. Light soundless snow.
"Was it good, the blood?" he whispered.
I nodded. "It was good," I said.
"What have I done?" he whispered. He appeared to be looking past me, at the stars. Did he see spirits up there? Did he hear them in some way that I could not?
"Are they watching us?" I asked.
"They're always watching," he said. "What else do they have to do? Yes, they're watching. And they wonder what I've done, just as I wondered what Amel had done. And how many more will descend?"
I moved to help him to his feet, but he begged me to wait, to give him another moment. His breathing was uneven and his heartbeat had a ragged edge to it.