by Rice, Anne
“This tender one has been your companion these many years,” I said, “and she has loved you without reserve. I give her my strong blood over and over again. But what is my blood in comparison to yours? I fear for her, if ever we were to be separated. Please let her drink. Give her your precious strength.”
Only the sweet silence followed, with the shimmering of so many tiny flames, with the scent of wax and oil, with the glitter of light in the Queen’s eyes.
But I saw an image in answer to my prayer. I saw in my mind my lovely Bianca lying on the breast of the Queen. And for one divine instant we were not in the shrine but in a great garden. I felt the breeze sweeping through the trees. I smelled flowers.
Then I was in the shrine again, kneeling, with my arms out.
At once I whispered and gestured for Bianca to come to me. She obeyed, having no idea of what was in my mind, and I guided her up close to the throat of the Queen, covering her as I did so that if Enkil were to lift his arm I would feel it.
“Kiss her throat,” I whispered.
Bianca was shivering. I think she was on the verge of tears, but she did as I told her to do, and then I saw her sink her small fang teeth into the skin of the Queen, and I felt her body become rigid beneath my embrace.
It was being accomplished.
For several long moments she drank, and it seemed I could hear their heartbeats struggling against each other, one great and one small, and then Bianca fell back, and I gathered her up in my arms, seeing the two tiny wounds heal in Akasha’s throat.
It was finished.
Withdrawing to the corner, I held Bianca close to me.
She gave several sighs and undulated and turned towards me and snuggled against me. Then she held out her hand and looked at it, and we could both see that it was whiter now, though it still had the color of human flesh.
My soul was wondrously soothed by this event. I am only confessing now what it meant to me. For having lied to Bianca I lived with an unbearable guilt, and now, having given her this gift of the Mother’s blood I felt a huge measure of relief from it.
It was my hope that the Mother would allow Bianca to drink again, and in fact this did happen. It happened often. And with every draught of the Divine Blood Bianca became immensely stronger.
But let me proceed with the tale in order.
The journey from the shrine was arduous. As in the past I had to rely on mortals to transport the Divine Parents in heavy coffins of stone, and I experienced some trepidation. But not as much as in former eras. I think I was convinced that Akasha and Enkil could protect themselves.
I don’t know what gave me this impression. Perhaps it was that they had opened the shrine for me, and lighted the lamps when I had been so weak and miserable.
Whatever the case, they were carried to our new home without difficulty, and as Bianca gazed on in complete awe, I took them out of their coffins and placed them on the throne together.
Their slow obedient movements, their sluggish plasticity—these things faintly horrified her.
But as she had now drunk the Mother’s blood, she was quick to join me in adjusting her fine spun dress and Enkil’s kilt. She helped me to smooth the plaited hair. She helped me to adjust the Queen’s bracelets.
When it was all done, I myself tended to the lamps and the candles.
Then we both knelt down to pray that the King and the Queen were content to be in this new place.
And after that we were off to find the brigands in the forest. We had already heard their voices. We quickly picked up their scent, and soon it was fine feasting in the woods, and a stash of stolen gold to make it all the more splendid.
We were back in the world, Bianca declared. She danced in circles in the great hall of the castle. She delighted in all the furnishings that crowded our new rooms. She delighted in our fancy coffered beds, and all the colored draperies.
I too delighted in it.
But we were in full agreement that we would not live in the world as I had lived in Venice. Such was simply too dangerous. And so having but few servants, we kept entirely to ourselves, and the rumors in Dresden were that our house belonged to a Lady and Lord who lived elsewhere.
When it pleased us to visit great cathedrals—and there were many—or great Royal Courts, we went some distance from our home—to other cities such as Weimar, or Eisenbach, or Leipzig—and cloaked ourselves in absurd wealth and mystery. It was all quite comforting after our barren life in the Alps. And we enjoyed it immensely.
But at every sunset my eyes were fixed on Dresden. At every sunset I listened for the sound of a powerful blood drinker—in Dresden.
And so the years passed.
With them came radical changes in clothes which greatly amused us. We were soon wearing elaborate wigs which we found ridiculous. And how I despised the pants which soon came into style, as well as the high-heeled shoes and white stockings which came into fashion with them.
We could not in our quiet seclusion include enough maids for Bianca, so it was I who laced up her tight corset. But what a vision she was in her low-breasted bodices and her broad swaying panniers.
During this time, I wrote many times to the Talamasca. Raymond died at the age of eighty-nine, but I soon established a connection there with a young woman named Elizabeth Nollis who had for her personal review my letters to Raymond.
She confirmed for me that Pandora was still seen with her Asian companion. She begged to know what I might tell of my own powers and habits, but on this I was not too revealing. I spoke of mind reading and the defiance of gravity. But I drove her to distraction with my lack of specifics.
The greatest and most mysterious success of these letters was that she told me much of the Talamasca. They were rich beyond anyone’s dreams, she said, and this was the source of their immense freedom. They had recently set up a Motherhouse in Amsterdam, and also in the city of Rome.
I was quite surprised by all this, and warned her of Santino’s “coven.”
She then sent me a reply that astonished me.
“It seems now that those strange ladies and gentlemen of which we have written in the past are no longer within the city in which they dwelt with such obvious pleasure. Indeed it is very difficult for our Motherhouse there to find any reports of such activities as one might expect from these people.”
What did this mean? Had Santino abandoned his coven? Had they gone on to Paris en masse? And if so, why?
Without explaining myself to my quiet Bianca—who was more and more hunting on her own—I went off to explore the Holy City myself, coming upon it for the first time in two hundred years.
I was wary, in fact, a good deal more wary, than I should want to admit to anyone. Indeed, the fear of fire gripped me so dreadfully that when I arrived I could do nothing but keep to the very top of St. Peter’s Basilica and look out over Rome with cold, shame-filled eyes; unable for long moments to hear with my blood drinker’s ears no matter how I struggled to gain control of myself.
But I soon satisfied myself, through the Mind Gift, that there were only a few blood drinkers to be found in Rome, and these were lone hunters without the consolation of companions. They were also weak. And as I raped their minds, I realized they knew little of Santino!
How had this come about? How had this one who had destroyed so much of my life freed himself from his own miserable existence?
Full of rage, I drew close to one of these lone blood drinkers, and soon accosted him, terrifying him and with reason.
“What of Santino and the Roman coven?” I demanded.
“Gone, all gone,” he said, “years ago. Who are you that you know of such things?”
“Santino!” I said. “Where did he go! Tell me.”
“But no one knows the answer,” he said. “I never laid eyes on him.”
“But someone made you,” I said. “Tell me.”
“My maker lives in the catacombs still where the coven used to gather. He’s mad. He can’t help you.”
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“Prepare to meet God or the Devil,” I said. And just that quick I put an end to him. I did it as mercifully as I could. And then he was no more but a spot of grease in the dirt and in this I rubbed my foot before I moved towards the catacombs.
He had spoken the truth.
There was but one blood drinker in this place, but I found it full of skulls just as it had been over a thousand years ago.
The blood drinker was a babbling fool, and when he saw me in my fine gentleman’s clothes, he stared at me and pointed his finger.
“The Devil comes in style,” he said.
“No, death has come,” I said. “Why did you make that other one whom I’ve destroyed this night?”
My confession made no impression on him.
“I make others to be my companions. But what good does it do? They turn on me.”
“Where is Santino?” I demanded.
“Long gone,” he said. “And who would have ever thought?”
I tried to read his mind, but he was too crazed and full of distracted thoughts. It was like chasing scattered mice.
“Look at me, when did you last see him!”
“Oh, decades ago,” he said. “I don’t know the year. What do years mean here?”
I could get nothing further from him. I looked about the miserable place with its few candles dripping wax upon yellowed skulls, and then turning on this creature I destroyed him with the Fire Gift as mercifully as I had destroyed the other. And I do think that it was truly a mercy.
There was but one left, and this one led a far better existence than the other two. I found him in handsome lodgings an hour before sunrise. With little difficulty I learnt that he kept a hiding place beneath the house, but that he spent his idle hours reading in his few well-appointed rooms, and that he dressed tolerably well.
I also learnt that he couldn’t detect my presence. He cut the figure of a man of some thirty mortal years, and he had been in the Blood for some three hundred.
At last I opened his door, breaking the lock, and stepped before him as he stood up, in horror, from his writing desk.
“Santino,” I said, “what became of him?”
Though he had fed like a glutton, he was gaunt with huge bones, and long black hair, and though he was very finely dressed in the style of the 1600s, his lace was soiled and dusty.
“In the name of Hell,” he whispered, “who are you? Where do you come from?”
Again there came that terrific confusion of mind which defeated my ability to subtract thoughts or knowledge from it.
“I’ll satisfy you on those points,” I said, “but you must answer me first. Santino. What happened to him.”
I took several deliberate steps towards him which put him into a paroxysm of terror.
“Be quiet now,” I said. Again I tried to read his mind, but I failed. “Don’t try to flee,” I said. “You won’t succeed with it. Answer my questions.”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” he said, fearfully.
“That ought to be plenty.”
He shook his head. “I came here from Paris,” he said. He was quaking. “I was sent by a vampire named Armand who is the leader of that coven.”
I nodded as though all this were quite intelligible to me, and as though I weren’t experiencing agony.
“That was a hundred years ago, maybe more. Armand had heard no word from Rome in a long time. I came to see the where and why of it. I found the Roman coven in complete confusion.”
He stopped, catching his breath, backing away from me.
“Speak quickly and tell me more,” I said. “I’m impatient.”
“Only if you swear on your honor that you won’t harm me. I’ve done you no harm after all. I was no child of Santino.”
“What makes you think I have honor?” I asked.
“I know you do,” he said. “I can sense such things. Swear on your honor to me and I’ll tell you everything.”
“Very well, I swear. I’ll leave you alive which is more than I’ve done with two others tonight who haunted the Roman streets like ghosts. Now talk to me.”
“I came from Paris as I told you. The Roman coven was weak. All ceremony had fallen away. One or two of the old ones had deliberately gone into the fire. Others had simply run away, and Santino had made no move to catch them and punish them. Once it was known that such escape was possible many more fled, and the coven was in a state of disaster.”
“Santino, did you see him?”
“Yes, I saw him. He had taken to dressing in fine clothes and jewels, and he received me in a palazzo much larger than this one. He told me strange things. I can’t really remember all of them.”
“You must remember.”
“He said he had seen old ones, too many old ones, and his faith in Satan had been shaken. He spoke of creatures who seemed to be made of marble, though he knew they could burn. He said he could no longer lead. He told me not to return to Paris, to do as I pleased, and so I have.”
“Old ones,” I said, repeating his words. “Did he tell you nothing of these old ones?”
“He spoke of the great Marius, and of a creature named Mael. And he spoke of beautiful women.”
“What were the names of these women?”
“He didn’t say their names to me. He said only that one had come to the coven on the night of its ceremonial dance, a woman like a living statue, and she had walked through the fire to show that it was useless against her. She had destroyed many of the fledglings who attacked her.
“When Santino showed attention and patience, she talked with him for several nights, telling him of her wanderings. He had no taste for the coven after that …
“… But it was the other woman who truly destroyed him.”
“And who was this?” I demanded. “You can’t speak fast enough for me.”
“The other woman was of the world, dressing in high style, and traveling by coach in the company of a dark-skinned Asian.”
I was dumbstruck, and maddened that he said nothing more.
“What happened with this other woman?” I finally asked, though a thousand other words flooded my mind.
“Santino wanted her love most desperately. Of course the Asian threatened him with pure destruction if he didn’t give up this course, but it was the woman’s condemnations that ruined him.”
“What condemnations, what did she say and why?” I demanded.
“I’m not certain. Santino spoke to her of his old piety and his fervor in directing the coven. She condemned him. She said time would punish him for what he’d done to his own kind. She turned away from him in disgust with him.”
I smiled, a bitter smile.
“Do you understand these things?” he asked. “Are they what you wanted?”
“Oh, yes, I understand them,” I said.
I turned and went to the window. I unfastened the wooden shutter, and stood looking down into the street.
I saw nothing, but I couldn’t reason.
“What became of the woman and her Asian companion?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I have seen them in Rome since. Maybe it was fifty years ago. They are easy to recognize, for she is very pale and her companion has a creamy brown skin and while she dresses always as the great lady, he tends toward the exotic.”
I took a deep easy breath.
“And Santino? Where did he go?” I demanded.
“That I can’t tell you, except that he had no spirit for anything when I talked to him. He wanted her love, and nothing else. He said the ancient ones had ruined him for immortality and frightened him as to death. He had nothing.”
I took another deep breath. Then I turned around and fixed this vampire in my gaze with all his considerable details.
“Listen to me,” I said. “If you ever see this creature again, the great lady who travels by coach, you must tell her one thing for me and one thing alone.”
“Very well.”
“That Marius lives and Marius is searching
for her.”
“Marius!” he said with a gasp. He looked at me respectfully, though his eyes measured me from head to foot, and then hesitantly he said, “But Santino believes you to be dead. I think that this is what he told to the woman, that he had sent the coven members North to hurt you.”
“I think it’s what he told her too. Now you remember that you saw me alive and that I search for her.”
“But where can she find you?”
“I can’t entrust that knowledge to you,” I said. “I would be foolish to do it. But remember what I have said. If you see her speak to her.”
“Very well,” he answered. “I hope that you find her.”
With no further words, I left him.
I went out then into the night and for a long time I roamed the streets of Rome, taking stock of how it had changed with the centuries and how so much had remained the same.
I marveled at the relics from my time which were still standing. I treasured the few hours I had to make my way through the ruins of the Colosseum and the Forum. I climbed the hill where I had once lived. I found some blocks still from old walls of my house. I wandered in a daze, staring at things because my brain was in a fever.
In truth I could hardly contain my excitement on account of what I had heard, and yet I was miserable that Santino had escaped me.
But oh, what a rich irony it was that he had fallen in love with her! That she had denied him! And to think he had confessed to her his murderous deeds, how loathsome. Had he been boasting when he spoke with her?
Finally my heart was under my control. I could endure with what I had learnt from the young vampire. I would soon come upon Pandora, I knew it.
As for the other ancient one, she who had walked through the fire, I could not then imagine who it was though I think I know now. Indeed, I’m almost certain of it. I wonder what pulled her out of her secretive ways to visit some merciful release upon Santino’s followers.
At last the night was almost spent, and I went home to be with my ever patient Bianca.
When I came down the stone steps of the cellar, I found her asleep against her coffin as if she’d been waiting for me. She was in a long nightgown of sheer white silk, tied at the wrists, and her hair was glossy and flowing.
