by Rice, Anne
Quinn, he said mentally, just as if he were addressing me. But what did he know of me? It had been years since I had set eyes on Stirling. Did he sense already the change that had been worked in me? Could he tell such a thing with his quick telepathy? Dear God, I had to banish it from my own mind. There was time to get out of this, time to go back to the Hermitage and leave Stirling to his furtive investigation, time to flee before he knew just what I’d become.
Yeah, leave—and now—and let him think I’d become a common mortal reader of the Chronicles, and come back when he’s nowhere in sight.
But I couldn’t leave. I was too lonely. I was too hell-bent on confrontation. That was the perfect truth. And here was Stirling, and here was the entranceway perhaps to Lestat’s heart.
On impulse I did the most forbidden of all things. I opened the unlocked back door of the flat and I went inside. I paused for only a breathless second in the dark elegant rear parlor, glancing at its roaring Impressionist paintings, and then I went down the corridor past the obviously empty bedrooms and found Stirling in the front room—a most formal drawing room, crowded with gilded furniture, and with its lace-covered windows over the street.
Stirling stood at the tall bookcase to the left side, and there was an open book in his hand. He merely looked at me as I stepped into the light of the overhead chandelier.
What did he see? For the moment I didn’t seek to find out. I was too busy looking at him, and realizing how much I loved him still for those times when I was the eighteen-year-old boy who saw spirits, and that he looked much the same as he had in those days—soft gray hair combed back loose from his high forehead and receding temples, large sympathetic gray eyes. He seemed no older than sixty-odd years, as if age hadn’t touched him, his body still slender and healthy, tricked out in a white-and-blue seersucker suit.
Only gradually, though it must have been a matter of seconds, did I realize he was afraid. He was looking up at me—on account of my height just about everybody looks up at me—and for all his seeming dignity, and he did have plenty of that, he could see the changes in me, but he wasn’t sure what had happened. He knew only that he felt instinctive and mindful fear.
Now, I am a Blood Hunter who can pass for human but not necessarily with someone as savvy as this man was. And then we had the question of telepathy, though I’d done my best to close up my mind the way my Maker had told me, that by simple will, it could be done.
“Quinn,” said Stirling. “What’s wrong with you?” The soft British accent took me back four and a half years in a finger snap.
“Everything’s wrong with me, Stirling,” I answered before I could rein myself in. “But why are you here?” Then I came right to the point like the blunderer I was. “Do you have Lestat’s permission to be in this flat?”
“No,” he said immediately. “I must confess I don’t have it. And what about you, Quinn?” His voice was full of concern. “Why are you here?”
He shoved the book back into place on the shelf and took a step towards me, but I stepped back into the shadows of the hall.
I almost buckled on account of his kindness. But another inevitable element had come sharply into play. His sweet delectable human scent was strong, and suddenly I saw him divorced from all I knew of him. I saw him as prey.
In fact, I felt the immense impossible gulf that now divided us, and I was hungry for him, hungry as if his kindness would pour into me in his very blood.
But Stirling was no Evil Doer. Stirling wasn’t game. I was losing my fledgling mind as I looked at him. My acute loneliness was driving me. My hunger was bedeviling me. I wanted both to feast on him and tell him all my woes and griefs.
“Don’t come close to me, Stirling,” I said, struggling to sound self-possessed. “You shouldn’t be here. You have no right to be here. If you’re so damned clever, why didn’t you just come by day, when Lestat couldn’t stop you?”
The scent of the blood was driving me crazy, that and my savage desire to close the gap between us, by murder or by love.
“I don’t fully know the answer to that, Quinn,” he said, his British accent formal and eloquent though his tone was not. “But you’re the last person I expected to find here. Quinn, let me look at you, please.”
Again, I said no. I was shaking. “Stirling, don’t try to charm me with that old easy manner,” I pressed on. “You might find someone else here who’s a lot more dangerous to you than I am. Or don’t you believe Lestat’s stories? Don’t tell me you think his vampires exist only in books.”
“You’re one of them,” he said softly. He frowned but the frown cleared in a moment. “Is this Lestat’s handiwork? He brought you over?”
I was amazed at his boldness, polite as it was. But then he was so much older than me, so used to a graceful authority, and I was painfully young. Again, in waves I felt the old love for him, the old need of him, and again it was fusing perfectly, and stupidly, with my thirst.
“It wasn’t Lestat’s doing,” I said. “In fact, he had nothing to do with it. I came here looking for him, Stirling, and now this has happened, this little tragedy that I’ve run into you.”
“A tragedy?”
“What else can it be, Stirling? You know who I am. You know where I live. You know all about my family at Blackwood Manor. How can I just walk out of here now that I’ve seen you and you’ve seen me?”
I felt the thirst thick in my throat. My vision was blurring. I heard myself speaking:
“Don’t try to tell me that if I let you go, the Talamasca wouldn’t come looking for me. Don’t try to tell me that you and your cohorts wouldn’t be prowling about in search of me. I know what would happen. This is god-awful, Stirling.”
His fear quickened, but he was struggling not to give in to it. And my hunger was becoming uncontrollable. If I let it go, if I let it play itself out, the act would seem inevitable, and seeming inevitable was all that conscience needed; but that just couldn’t happen, not to Stirling Oliver. I was hopelessly confused.
Before I realized what I was doing, I moved closer to him. I could see the blood in him now as well as smell it. And he made a fatal misstep. That is, he moved backwards, as if he couldn’t stop himself from doing it, and he seemed in that gesture to be more the victim than ever. That backwards step caused me to advance.
“Stirling, you shouldn’t have come here,” I said. “You’re an invader.” But I could hear the flatness of my voice in my hunger, the meaninglessness of the words. Invader, invader, invader.
“You can’t harm me, Quinn,” he said, his voice very level and reasonable, “you wouldn’t do it. There’s too much between us. I’ve always understood you. I’ve always understood Goblin. Are you going to betray all that now?”
“It’s an old debt,” I said, my voice having fallen to a whisper.
I knew I was in the bright light of the chandelier now, and he could see the subtle enhancement of the transformation. The transformation was very fancy, so very fancy. And it seemed to me in my demented state that the fear in him had increased to silent panic and that the panic was sharpening the fragrance of the blood.
Do dogs smell fear? Vampires smell it. Vampires count on it. Vampires find it savory. Vampires can’t resist it.
“It’s wrong,” he said, but he too was whispering as though my very stare had weakened him, which it can certainly do to mortals, and he knew there was no point to a fight. “Don’t do it, my boy,” he said, the words barely audible.
I found myself reaching out for his shoulder, and when my fingers touched him I felt an electricity that shot through my limbs. Crush him. Crush his bones, but first and foremost swallow his soul in the blood.
“Don’t you realize …” He trailed off, and out of his mind I subtracted the rest, that the Talamasca would be further inflamed, that it would be bad for everyone. The vampires, the Blood Hunters, the Children of the Millennia had all left New Orleans. Scattered in the dark were the vampires. It was a truce. And now I meant to shatter
it!
“But they don’t know me, you see,” I said, “not in this form, they don’t. Only you do, my old friend, and that’s the horror. You know me, and that’s why this has to come about.”
I bent down, close to him, and kissed the side of his throat. My friend, my deepest friend in all the world once. And now we’ll have this union. Lust old and new. The boy I’d been loving him. I felt the blood pushing through the artery. My left arm slid beneath his right arm. Don’t hurt him. He couldn’t get away from me. He didn’t even try.
“This will be painless, Stirling,” I whispered. I sank my teeth cleanly, and the blood filled my mouth very slowly, and with it there came the sudden course of his life and dreams.
Innocent. The word burned through the pleasure. In a luminous drift of figures and voices he emerged, pushing his way through the crowd; Stirling, the man, pleading with me in my mental vision, saying Innocent. There I was, the boy of that old time, and Stirling saying Innocent. I couldn’t stop what had begun.
It was someone else who did that for me.
I felt an iron grip on my shoulder and I was whipped back away from Stirling, and Stirling staggered, almost falling, and then he tripped and sank down sideways into a chair at the desk.
I was slammed against the bookcase. I lapped at the blood on my lip and I tried to fight the dizziness. The chandelier appeared to be rocking, and the colors of the paintings on the wall were afire.
A firm hand was placed against my chest to steady me and to hold me back.
And then I realized I was looking at Lestat.
3
Quickly I regained my balance. His eyes were on me and I didn’t have the slightest intention of looking away. Nevertheless, I looked him up and down because I couldn’t help it, and because he was as breathtaking as he has always described himself to be, and I had to see him, truly see him, even if he was to be the last thing I ever saw.
His skin was a pale golden that offset his violet blue eyes wonderfully, and his hair was a true mane of yellow, tousled and curling just above his shoulders. His colored glasses, almost the same violet tint as his eyes, were pushed up into his hair, and he was staring at me, golden eyebrows scowling slightly, waiting perhaps for me to regain my senses; I honestly didn’t know.
Quickly I realized he was wearing the black velvet jacket with the cameo buttons that had been his costume in the Chronicle called Merrick, each little cameo almost certainly of sardonyx, the coat itself very fancy with its pinched waist and flaring skirt. His linen shirt was open at the throat; his gray pants weren’t important and neither were his black boots.
What engraved itself into my consciousness was his face—square and taut, the eyes very big and the well-shaped mouth voluptuous, and the jaw somewhat hard, the whole more truly well proportioned and appealing than he could ever have claimed.
In fact, his own descriptions of himself didn’t do him justice because his looks, though certainly a handful of obvious blessings, were ignited by a potent inner fire.
He wasn’t staring at me with hatred. He wasn’t steadying me anymore with his hand.
I cursed myself, from the pit of my heart, that I was taller than he was, that he was in fact looking up at me. Maybe he’d cheerfully obliterate me on that account alone.
“The letter,” I stammered. “The letter!” I whispered, but though my hand groped, and my mind groped, I couldn’t reach inside my coat for the letter. I was wobbling in fear.
And as I stood there shivering and sweating, he reached inside my jacket and withdrew the envelope. Flash of sparkling fingernails.
“This is for me, is it, Tarquin Blackwood?” he asked. His voice had a touch of the French accent, no more. He smiled suddenly and he looked as if he couldn’t hurt anyone for the world. He was too attractive, too friendly, too young. But the smile vanished as quickly as it had come.
“Yes,” I said. Or rather it was a stutter. “The letter, please read it.” I faltered, then pressed on. “Before you … make up your mind.”
He tucked the letter into his own inside pocket and then he turned to Stirling, who sat dazed and silent, eyes cloudy, his hands clinging to the back of the chair before the desk. The back was like a shield in front of him, though a useless one as I well knew.
Lestat’s eyes fixed on me again:
“We don’t feed on members of the Talamasca, Little Brother,” he said. “But you”—he looked at Stirling—“you nearly got what you almost deserve.”
Stirling stared forward, plainly unable to answer, and only shook his head.
“Why did you come here, Mr. Oliver?” Lestat asked him.
Again, Stirling merely shook his head. I saw the tiny drops of blood on his starched white collar. I felt an overwhelming shame, a shame so deep and painful it filled me completely, banishing even the faintest aftertaste of the attempted feast.
I went silently crazy.
Stirling had almost died, and for my thirst. Stirling was alive. Stirling was in danger now, danger from Lestat. Behold: Lestat, like a blaze in front of me. Yes, he could pass for human, but what a human—magnetic and charged with energy as he continued to take command.
“Mr. Oliver, I’m talking to you,” Lestat said in a soft yet imperious tone. He picked up Stirling by the lapels and, moving him clumsily to the far corner of the parlor, he flung him down into a large satin upholstered wing chair.
Stirling looked the worse for it—who wouldn’t?—still unable apparently to focus his gaze.
Lestat sat down on the velvet couch very near him. I was completely forgotten for the moment, or so I assumed.
“Mr. Oliver,” said Lestat, “I’m asking you. What made you come into my house?”
“I don’t know,” said Stirling. He glanced up at me and then at the figure who was questioning him, and I struggled, because I couldn’t help it, to see what he was seeing—this vampire whose skin still glowed though it was tanned, and whose eyes were prismatic and undeniably fierce.
The fabled beauty of Lestat seemed potent as a drug. And the crowning light of the chandelier was merciless or splendid depending entirely on one’s point of view.
“Yes, you do know why you came here,” said Lestat, his voice subdued, the French accent no more than a beguiling taste. “It wasn’t enough for the Talamasca to drive me out of the city. You have to come into those places that belong to me?”
“I was wrong to do it,” Stirling said. It was spoken in a sigh. He scowled and pressed his lips together hard. “I shouldn’t have done it.” For the first time he looked directly into Lestat’s eyes.
Lestat glanced up at me.
Sitting forward he reached over and slipped his fingers behind Stirling’s bloodstained collar, startling Stirling and glaring up at me.
“We don’t spill blood when we feed, Little Brother,” he said with a passing mischievous smile. “You have much to learn.”
The words hit me rather like a wallop and I found myself speechless. Did this mean that I’d walk out of here alive?
Don’t kill Stirling, that’s what I was thinking; and then suddenly Lestat, as he still stared at me, made a short little laugh.
“Tarquin, turn that chair around,” he said, gesturing to the desk, “and sit down. You make me nervous standing there. You’re too damned tall. And you’re making Stirling Oliver nervous as well.”
I felt a great rush of relief, but as I tried to do what he’d told me to do my hands were shaking so badly that I was again full of shame. Finally, I managed to sit down facing the pair of them, but a polite distance away.
Stirling made a small frown as he looked at me, but it was entirely sympathetic and he was still obviously off base. I hadn’t drunk enough blood to account for his dizziness. It was the act of it, the drawing on his heart. That, and the fact that Lestat had come, Lestat had interrupted us, Lestat was here and he was demanding again of Stirling, Why had Stirling come into the flat?
“You could have come here by day,” said Lestat, addressing St
irling in an even voice. “I have human guards from sunup to sundown but the Talamasca is good at bribing guards. Why didn’t you take the hint that I look after my properties myself once the sun has set? You disobeyed the directive of your own Superior General. You disobeyed your own common sense.”
Stirling nodded, eyes veering off, as if he had no argument, and then in a weak but dignified voice he said:
“The door was unlocked.”
“Don’t insult me,” said Lestat, his voice still patient and even. “It’s my house.”
Again, Stirling appeared to meet Lestat’s gaze. He looked at him steadily and then he spoke in a more coherent voice.
“I was wrong to do it, and you’ve caught me. Yes, I’ve disobeyed the directive of the Superior General, that’s true. I came because I couldn’t resist it. I came because perhaps I didn’t quite believe in you. I didn’t believe in spite of all I’d read and been told.”
Lestat shook his head disapprovingly and again there came that short little laugh.
“I expect that credulity of mortal readers of the Chronicles,” he said. “I expect it even of fledglings like Little Brother here. But I don’t expect it of the Talamasca, who have so ceremoniously declared war on us.”
“For what it’s worth,” said Stirling, gathering his strength somewhat, “I was not for that war. I voted against it as soon as I heard of the declaration. I was for closing the Motherhouse here in Louisiana, if need be. But then … I was for accepting our losses and retreating to our libraries abroad.”
“You drove me out of my own city,” said Lestat. “You question my neighbors in these precincts. You rummage through all my public property titles and records. And now you trespass, and you say it was because you didn’t believe? That’s an excuse but not a reason.”
“The reason was I wanted to see you,” said Stirling, his voice growing stronger. “I wanted what others in the Order have had. I wanted to see you with my own eyes.”
“And now that you have seen me,” Lestat replied, “what precisely will you do?” He glanced at me again, a flash of brilliant eyes and a smile that was gone in an instant as he looked back to the man in the chair.
