by Anne Rice
A bed of dark sweet flowers had been planted against the old brick wall, and a stand of bananas was already thriving in the corner, long graceful knifelike leaves nodding in the breeze.
This gladdened my vicious selfish little heart beyond words.
I went inside. The back parlour had finally been finished, and beautifully laid out with the fine antique chairs I'd selected for it, and the thick pale Persian carpet of faded red.
I looked up and down the length of the hallway, past the fresh wallpaper of gold and white stripes, and over the yards of dark carpet, and I saw Louis standing in the front parlour door.
"Don't ask me where I've been or what I've done," I said. I walked towards him, brushed him aside, and went into the room. Ah, it surpassed all my expectations. There were a very replica of his old desk between the windows, and the camelback sofa of silver damask, and the oval table inlaid with mahogany. And the spinet against the far wall.
"I know where you've been," he said, "and I know what you've done."
"Oh? And what's to follow? Some stultifying and endless lecture? Tell me now. So I can go to sleep."
I turned around to face him, to see what effect this stiff rebuff had had, if any, and there stood David beside him, dressed very well in black fine-combed velvet, and with his arms folded across his chest, and leaning against the frame of the door.
They were both looking at me, with their pale, expressionless faces, David presenting the darker, taller figure, but how amazingly similar they appeared. It only penetrated to me slowly that Louis had dressed for this little occasion, and for once, in clothes which did not look as if they'd come from an attic trunk.
It was David who spoke first.
"The carnival starts tomorrow in Rio," he said, the voice even more seductive than it had ever been in mortal life. "I thought we might go."
I stared at him with obvious suspicion. It seemed a dark light infused his expression. There was a hard luster to his eyes. But the mouth was so gentle, without a hint of malevolence, or bitterness. No menace emanated from him at all.
Then Louis roused himself from his reverie and quietly moved away down the hall and into his old room. How I knew that old pattern of faintly creaking boards and steps!
I was powerfully confused, and a little breathless.
I sat down on the couch, and beckoned for Mojo to come, who seated himself right in front of me, leaning his heavy weight against my legs.
"You mean this?" I asked. "You want us to go there together?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "And after that, the rain forests. What if we should go there? Deep into those forests." He unfolded his arms and, bowing his head, began to pace with long slow steps. "You said something to me, I don't remember when... Maybe it was an image I caught from you before it all happened, something about a temple which mortals didn't know of, lost in the depths of the jungle. Ah, think of how many such discoveries there must be."
Ah, how genuine the feeling, how resonant the voice.
"Why have you forgiven me?" I asked.
He stopped his pacing, and looked at me, and I was so distracted by the evidence of the blood in him, and how it had changed his skin and hair and eyes, that I couldn't think for a moment. I held up my hand, begging him not to speak. Why did I never get used to this magic? I dropped my hand, allowing him, nay, bidding him, to go on.
"You knew I would," he said, assuming his old measured and restrained tone. "You knew when you did it that I'd go on loving you. That I'd need you. That I would seek you out and cling to you of all the beings in this world."
"Oh, no. I swear I didn't," I whispered.
"I went off awhile to punish you. You're past all patience, really you are. You are the damnedest creature, as you've been called by wiser beings than I. But you knew I'd come back. You knew I'd be here."
"No, I never dreamt it."
"Don't start weeping again."
"I like to weep. I must. Why else would I do it so much?"
"Well, stop!"
"Oh, it's going to be fun, isn't it? You think you are the leader of this little coven, don't you, and you're going to start bossing me around."
"Come again?"
"You don't even look like the elder of the two of us anymore, and you never were the elder. You let my beautiful and irresistible visage deceive you in the simplest and most foolish way. I'm the leader. This is my house. I shall say if we go to Rio."
He began to laugh. Slowly at first, and then more deeply and freely. If there was menace in him it was only in the great flashing shifts of expression, the dark glint in his eyes. But I wasn't sure there was any menace at all.
"You are the leader?" he asked scornfully. The old authority.
"Yes, I am. So you ran off... you wanted to show me you could get along without me.
You could hunt for yourself; you could find a hiding place by day. You didn't need me. But here you are!"
"Are you coming with us to Rio or not?"
"Coming with us! Did you say 'us'?"
"I did."
He walked over to the chair nearest the end of the couch and sat down. It penetrated to me that obviously he was already in full command of his new powers. And I, of course, couldn't gauge how strong he truly was merely by looking at him. The dark tone of his skin concealed too much. He crossed his legs and fell into an easy posture of relaxation, but with David's dignity intact.
Perhaps it was a matter of the way his back remained straight against the chair behind him, or the elegant way his hand rested on his ankle, and the other arm molded itself to the arm of the chair.
Only the thick wavy brown hair betrayed the dignity somewhat, tumbling down on his forehead so that finally he gave a little unconscious toss to his head.
But quite suddenly his composure melted; his face bore all the sudden lines of serious confusion, and then pure distress.
I couldn't stand it. But I forced myself to be silent.
"I tried to hate you," he confessed, the eyes widening even as the voice nearly died away. "I couldn't do it; it's as simple as that." And for one moment there was the menace, the great preternatural anger, glaring out of him, before the face became perfectly miserable and then merely sad.
"Why not?"
"Don't play with me."
"I've never played with you! I mean these things when I say them. How can you not hate me?"
"I'd be making the same mistake you made if I hated you," he said, eyebrows raised. "Don't you see what you've done? You've given me the gift, but you spared me the capitulation. You've brought me over with all your skill and all your strength, but you didn't require of me the moral defeat. You took the decision from me, and gave me what I could not help but want."
I was speechless. It was all true, but it was the damnedest lie I'd ever heard. "Then rape and murder are our paths to glory! I don't buy it. They are filthy. We are all damned and now you are too. And that's what I've done to you."
He bore that as if it were a series of soft slaps, merely flinching just a little and then fixing his eyes on me again.
"It took you two hundred years to learn that you wanted it," he said. "I knew the moment I woke out of the stupor and saw you lying there on the floor. You looked like an empty shell to me. I knew you'd gone too far with it. I was in terror for you. And I was seeing you with these new eyes."
"Yes."
"Do you know what went through my mind? I thought you'd found a way to die. You'd given me every drop of blood in you. And now you yourself were perishing before my very eyes. I knew I loved you. I knew I forgave you. And I knew with every breath I took and with every new color or shape I saw before me that I wanted what you'd given me- the new vision and life, which none of us can really describe! Oh, I couldn't admit it. I had to curse you, fight you for a little while. But that's all it was in the end-a little while."
"You're much smarter than I am," I said softly.
"Well, of course, what did you expect?"
I smiled. I sett
led back on the couch.
"Ah, this is the Dark Trick," I whispered. "How right they were, the old ones, to give it that name. I wonder if the trick's on me. For this is a vampire sitting here with me, a blood drinker of enormous power, my child, and what are old emotions to him now?"
I looked at him, and once more I felt the tears coming. They never let me down.
He was frowning, and his lips were slightly parted, and it seemed now I truly had dealt him a terrible blow. But he didn't speak to me. He seemed puzzled, and then he gave a little shake of his head as though he couldn't reply.
I realized that it wasn't vulnerability I saw in him now so much as compassion, and blatant concern for me.
He left the chair suddenly, dropping to his knees in front of me, and putting his hands on my shoulders, completely ignoring my faithful Mojo, who stared at him with indifferent eyes.
Did he realize this was how I'd faced Claudia in my fever dream?
"You're the same," he said. He shook his head. "The very same." . "The same as what?"
"Oh, every time you ever came to me, you touched me; you wrung from me a deep protectiveness. You made me feel love. And it's the same now. Only you seem all the more lost and in need of me now. I'm to take you forward, I see it clearly. I'm your link with the future. It's through me that you'll see the years ahead."
"You're the same too. An absolute innocent. A bloody fool." I tried to brush his hand off my shoulder, but didn't succeed. "You're headed for great trouble. Just wait and see." "Oh, how exciting. Now, come, we must go to Rio. We must not miss anything of the carnival. Though of course we can go again . . . and again . . . and again . . . But come."
I sat very still, looking at him for the longest time, until finally he became concerned again. His fingers were quite strong as they pressed my shoulders. Yes, I had done well with him in every step.
"What is it?" he asked timidly. "Are you grieving for me?"
"Perhaps, a little. As you've said, I'm not as clever as you are at knowing what I want.
But I think I'm trying to fix this moment in my mind. I want to remember it always-I want to remember the way you are now, here with me ... before things start to go wrong."
He stood up, pulling me suddenly to my feet, with scarcely any effort at all. There was a soft triumphant smile on his face as he noted my amazement.
"Oh, this is going to be really something, this little tussle," I said.
"Well, you can fight with me in Rio, while we are dancing in the streets."
He beckoned for me to follow him. I wasn't sure what we would do next or how we would make this journey, but I was wondrously excited, and I honestly didn't care about the small aspects of it at all.
Of course Louis would have to be persuaded to come, but we would gang up on him, and somehow lure him into it, no matter how reticent he was.
I was about to follow him out of the room, when something caught my eye. It was on Louis's old desk.
It was the locket of Claudia. The chain was coiled there, catching the light with its tiny gold links, and the oval case itself was open and propped against the inkwell, and the little face seemed to be peering directly at me.
I reached down and picked up the locket, and looked very closely at the little picture.
And a sad realization came to me.
She was no longer the real memories. She had become those fever dreams. She was the image in the jungle hospital, a figure standing against the sun in Georgetown, a ghost rushing through the shadows of Notre Dame. In life she'd never been my conscience! Not Claudia, my merciless Claudia. What a dream! A pure dream.
A dark secret smile stole over my lips as I looked at her, bitter and on the edge, once more, of tears. For nothing had changed in the realization that I had given her the words of accusation. The very same thing was true. There had been the opportunity for salvation-and I had said no.
I wanted to say something to her as I held the locket; I wanted to say something to the being she had been, and to my own weakness, and to the greedy wicked being in me who had once again triumphed. For I had. I had won.
Yes, I wanted to say something so terribly much! And would that it were full of poetry, and deep meaning, and would ransom my greed and my evil, and my lusty little heart. For I was going to Rio, wasn't I, and with David, and with Louis, and a new era was beginning . . .
Yes, say something-for the love of heaven and the love of Claudia-to darken it and show it for what it is! Dear God, to lance it and show the horror at the core.
But I could not.
What more is there to say, really?
The tale is told.
Lestat de Lioncourt New Orleans 1991
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