Prince Lestat

by Anne Rice

  "It might well have incited other blood drinkers to incite mortals against us," I said. "I want you in the cellar until sunset. This compound has a great staff of mortal guards, and that is good but I must take every precaution. Please do as I say. I'll be in this room for the time being. That's already been arranged. And I will see you both very soon indeed."

  I held them both to me for a long moment before they left.

  The door had the usual ornate little brass keys and a big brass bolt. I locked it up.

  I fully expected the Voice to start ranting. But there was only silence and a dim little sound, almost a comforting sound, from the play of the gas flames on the porcelain logs. They had a rhythm all their own, these gas flames, a dance of their own. When I turned out the lights the room was pleasingly shadowy and dim.

  I was steeling myself for the Voice.

  Then the inevitable paralysis started to come over me. The sun rising over Manhattan. I kicked off my shoes and lay down on the long damask couch with a plump little needlepoint pillow for my head and closed my eyes.

  There came a flash of the twins again. It was just as if I was there with them in that grassy place in the warm sunshine. I could hear the insects swarming in the fields nearby, swarming in the green shade beneath the nearby trees. And the twins were smiling and talking to me, and it felt we'd been talking forever, and then came the sound of the Voice weeping, and I said, "But what do you want me to call you! What is your true name?"

  And in a tearful tone, he said, "It's what she always called me. She knew. My name is Amel."

  27

  Lestat

  Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

  AFTER SUNSET, I went on the air immediately with Benji. The Voice had whispered hateful words in my ear when I awakened, but it was completely quiet now.

  We were in the fourth-floor studio with its microphones, phone banks, and computers, and Antoine and Sybelle were with us, Antoine to man the phones.

  I was very proud of my handsome Antoine, proud of his composing, his piano playing, his violin playing, proud of his expertise with all this modern equipment, but there was not time now for any real reunion with him. That would have to wait. That I'd keep him close after this was a foregone conclusion. He was my fledgling and I would assume full responsibility for him.

  But the broadcast was on my mind now. Benji reminded me that vampires all over the world were listening, that even the fledglings crowding the street below could hear the broadcast through their cell phones, and that my remarks would be recorded, and replayed all through the next day. When Benji gave me the signal, I started to speak in a low voice well below the frequency that mortal ears could hear.

  I explained that Viktor, the unfortunate victim of a blood drinker kidnapping, had been returned safely and order in our world was being restored. I told the young vampires of the world who the Voice was and explained various ways of defending oneself against the Voice. I explained this was Amel, the spirit that animated all of us and had only just come to consciousness. I explained I was in direct communication with the Voice and would do my best to quiet him and discourage him from attempting any more mischief. I assured them finally that I felt the Burnings were over for the most part--we had had no word of the Burnings in two nights, according to Benji--and that the Voice was now occupied in other ways. Then I made them a promise. Within a few nights, I would come to speak to them at some place where we might gather unseen. I did not know yet where that was to be. But I would give them the location when I did know and I would give them time to assemble.

  When I said those words, I heard them roaring with approval in the street below, a ghost of a sound rolling up the walls and penetrating this studio. Benji smiled triumphantly, gazing at me as if I were a god.

  "For now, you must do as I say," I said into the microphone. "You know what I am going to explain to you. But you must hear it again. No quarreling whatsoever amongst yourselves. No one, but no one, must strike out at another blood drinker. This is forbidden! And you must hunt the evildoer, never the innocent. There are to be no exceptions. And you are to have honor! You must have honor. If you do not know what honor is, then look it up in your online dictionaries and memorize the definition. Because if we do not have honor, we are lost."

  I sat there in silence for a moment. Again, they were roaring and cheering in the street below. I was gazing off and into my thoughts. I knew the lights were flashing as calls were coming in from all over the world. Through Antoine's earphones I could hear him greeting each caller, and stabbing the lighted button to put each caller on hold.

  The Voice had not said a word. And I wanted to say more as to the Voice, and so I did.

  I was brief on this. But I said it.

  "Understand, Children of the Night, that the Voice may have knowledge to share with us. The Voice may have gifts to give to us! The Voice may well become a precious gift to us in himself. The Voice is after all the fount of all we are; and the Voice has only just begun to express himself, to tell us what he wants us to know. No, we must not allow ourselves to be duped by the Voice into destroying one another. Never. But we must have patience with the Voice. We must have respect, and I mean this, we must have respect for who and what the Voice is."

  I hesitated. I wanted to say more.

  "The Voice is a mystery," I said, "and this mystery must not be treated by us with hasty and foolish contempt."

  Inside me there was a silent convulsing as if Amel were responding and wanted me to know he was responding, but he didn't speak.

  I went on talking again. I spoke of many things. I spoke softly into the microphone and spoke into a great silence--I spoke of the Little Drink and the art of it, to feed without taking life, I spoke of the elegance of compassion, to feed without cruelty. "Even mortals follow such rules when they hunt game," I said. "Are we not better than they are?" I spoke of territories where the evildoers still congregated, places of violence and want where humans were driven to cruelty and murder. I spoke of great communities devoid of such desperate villains, which could not become the hunting grounds of the Undead.

  "This is the beginning," I said. "We will survive; we will define ourselves."

  A deep conviction of all this had rooted itself in me. Or rather I was finding it within me, because perhaps it had always been there. "We will not behave as things to be despised simply because we are despised!" I said. "We must emerge from this crisis with a new will to prosper." I paused. Then I repeated the word "prosper." And I said again, because I couldn't stop myself. "Hell shall have no dominion over us. Hell shall have no dominion."

  There came again that low rumbling explosion of applause and cheering from the streets around us, like a great sigh as it expanded and then began to die away.

  I pushed the microphone back and in a silent passion left the studio as Benji began to answer the calls.

  When I came down into the drawing room on the first floor, I saw that Rhoshamandes and Benedict were there surrounded by Sevraine, Gregory, Seth, and Fareed and others, and they were all in fast conversation with one another. Nobody, not even Rhoshamandes or Benedict themselves, asked if they might now be released.

  There was so much more to be done, to be decided, so much more that the blood drinkers around the world could not fully understand. But for now, all was well under this roof. I sensed this. I felt it.

  Rhoshamandes, dressed in fresh clothes, his arm and hand restored to him, was actually telling Eleni and Eugenie and Allesandra about his life after he'd left France centuries ago, and Gregory was asking him small rather interesting questions, and this proceeded, all of this, as if we'd never been at war the night before, and I'd never acted like the monster I was. And it was certainly proceeding as if he'd never murdered the great Maharet.

  When he saw me in the door, Rhoshamandes only nodded at me and, after a respectful second or two, went back to what he'd been saying, about this place he'd built for himself, this castle in the northern seas. He appeared indifferent
to me. But I secretly loathed the sight of him. And I could not stop myself from imagining what it had been like when he slaughtered Maharet. I could not forgive him for having done this. I was offended by this entire civilized gathering. I was deeply offended. But what did that matter? I had to think now not merely for myself but on behalf of everyone else.

  There would come a time perhaps to reckon with him, I figured. And very likely he harbored a hatred for me on account of what I'd done that would bring about a time of reckoning for both of us much sooner than I desired.

  On the other hand, perhaps the secret of his brutality was a shallowness, a resilience born out of cosmic indifference to what he'd done.

  There was another blood drinker staring at him coldly from a distance, and that was Everard, the spiffy black-haired fledgling of Rhoshamandes now making his home in Italy, who sat silently in one of the corners of the room. His eyes were fixed on Rhoshamandes with cold contempt, but I caught glimpses of a mind there that was seething and making no effort to conceal its torment. Ancient fires, rituals, eerie singing in Latin, all this drifted through his consciousness as he stared at Rhoshamandes, quite aware of my presence and yet allowing me to glimpse these thoughts.

  And so this fledgling hates his maker and why? Was it on behalf of Maharet?

  Slowly, without turning his head Everard looked up at me and his mind went quiet and I caught from him the distinct response that he did indeed hate Rhoshamandes but for more reasons than he could say.

  How in the world could any prince keep order amongst these powerful beings, I thought. Indeed the sheer impossibility of it rather crushed me.

  I turned and left them all that way.

  Way upstairs, Sybelle was playing her music. This must have been in the studio. Possibly Benji was breaking up the broadcast with it. It was comforting, the melody. I listened with all my being, and I heard only gentle voices all through the various chambers that made up this great and glorious house.

  I was tired all over, dreadfully tired. I wanted to see Rose and Viktor, but not before I'd spoken to Marius.

  I found him now in a library very much different from the one I'd come to love, a more dusty and crowded affair in the middle townhouse of the Trinity Gate complex, a room full of maps and world globes, and stacks of periodicals and newspapers as well as books climbing the walls, where he was at a battered old oak table spotted with ink, poring over a huge book on the history of India and Sanskrit.

  He'd put on one of those cassocks that Seth and Fareed obviously favored, but his choice had been for a deep red-velvet fabric, and where he'd gotten it I had no idea, but it was Marius through and through. His long full hair was loose on his shoulders. No disguises or subtle accommodation of the modern world required under this roof.

  "Yes, they have the right idea, surely," he said to me, "when it comes to clothing. Why I have ever bothered with barbarian garb, I'll never know."

  He was talking like a Roman. By barbarian garb he meant trousers.

  "Listen to me," I said. "Viktor and Rose must be given the Blood. I am hoping that you will do this. I have my reasons, but where do you stand with being the one?"

  "I've already spoken to them," he said. "I'm honored and willing. I told them as much."

  I was relieved.

  I sat down in a chair opposite his, a big Renaissance Revival chair of carved wood that Henry VIII might have loved. It was creaky but comfortable. Slowly I saw the whole room was more or less Tudor in style. This room had no windows. But Armand had given it the effect of windows by heavy gold-framed mirrors set in every wall, and the hearth was Tudor, with black carvings, and heavy andirons. The coffered ceiling was scored by dark beams. Armand was a genius at these things.

  "Then it is just a matter of when," I said with a sigh.

  "Surely you don't want to bring them over until some decision has been made about the Voice," said Marius. "We need to meet again, all of us, don't we, as soon as you're willing?"

  "Well, you would think in terms of the Roman Senate," I said. "Why isn't he in my head or yours?" Marius asked. "Why is he so quiet? I would have thought he'd be punishing Rhoshamandes and Benedict but he isn't."

  "He's in my head now, Marius," I said. "I can feel him. I've always known when he was absent or leaving. But now I know when he's simply there. It's rather like having a finger pressed against one's scalp or cheek or the lobe of one's ear. He's here."

  Marius looked exasperated, and then plainly furious.

  "He's stopped his relentless meddling out there," I said, "that's what matters." I gestured to the front of the house, towards the street where the young ones were milling, towards the wide world which lay to the east, and the west, and the south and the north.

  "I suppose it would be pointless for me to scrawl a message to you on paper here," said Marius, "because he can read it through your eyes. But why bring over these two until we're certain that this thing is not yet going to destroy the entire tribe?"

  "He's never wanted to do that," I said. "And there is no ultimate solution so long as he exists. Even in the most agreeable host, he can still plot and then travel, and then foment. I don't see any end to that except for one."

  "Which is what?"

  "That he might have some larger vision, some infinitely larger challenge, with which to occupy his mind."

  "Does he want that?" Marius asked. "Or is that not something you've dreamed up, Lestat? You are such a romantic at heart. Oh, I know you fancy yourself hard-boiled and practical by nature. But you're a romantic. You always have been. What he wants perhaps is a sacrificial lamb, a perfect blood drinker, old and powerful, whose functioning brain he can take over and control relentlessly as he gradually obliterates its personality. Rhoshamandes was his prototype. Only Rhoshamandes wasn't vicious enough or foolish enough--."

  "Yes, that does make sense," I said. "I'm exhausted. I want to go back to that little retreat I've found in the other building."

  "What Armand calls the French library."

  "Yes, exactly," I said. "He couldn't have designed a more perfect spot for me. I need to rest. To think. But you may do this with Viktor and Rose whenever you wish, and I say the sooner the better--don't wait, don't wait for any resolution that may never come. You do it, go on and do it, and you'll make them strong and telepathic and resourceful, and you'll give them the best instructions, and so I leave it to you."

  "And if I do it with a bit of ceremony?" he asked.

  "Why not?" I remembered the description of the making of Armand, how he'd taken the young Armand into a painted room in his Venetian palace and there amid blazing multicolored murals he had made him, offering the blood as sacrament with the most appropriate words. So different from my own making, that ruthless Magnus who was now a wise ghost, but had been then a warped and vile blood drinker, tormenting me as he brought me over.

  I had to stop thinking of all this. I was bone tired, as mortals say. I rose to go. But then I stopped.

  "If we are to be one tribe now," I said. "If we are to be a true sodality, then we can and should perhaps have our own ceremonies, rites, trappings, some way of surrounding with solemn enthusiasm the birth of others into our ranks. So do it as you wish and make a precedent, perhaps, that will endure."

  He smiled.

  "Allow me one innovation at the start," he said, "that I perform the rites with Pandora, who is nearly my same age, and very skilled at making others, obviously. We will share the making of each between us so that my gifts will go into both Rose and Viktor, and her gifts will go into both as well. Because you see, I cannot really bring both of them over perfectly at the same time on my own."

  "Of course, as you wish," I said. "I leave this in your hands."

  "And then it can be done with grace and solemnity for both at the same time."

  I nodded. "And if they emerge from this telepathically deaf to one another, and deaf to both of you?"

  "So be it. There's a wisdom in it. Let them have their silence in which to lea
rn. When has telepathy really done us any great measure of good?"

  I gave my assent.

  I was at the door when he spoke again.

  "Lestat, be careful with this Voice!" he said.

  I turned around and looked at him.

  "Don't be your usual impulsive self in lending this thing a sympathetic ear."

  He stood and left the table, appealing to me with his arms out.

  "Lestat, no one is insensible to what this thing endures in the body of one with dimmed eyes and stopped ears, a thing that can't move, can't write, can't think, can't speak. We know."

  "Do you?"

  "Give Seth and Fareed time, as long as the thing is quiet, to ponder this."

  "What? The making of a ghastly machine?"

  "No, but possibly some vehicle can yet be found--some fledgling brought over for the very purpose, with senses and faculties intact, but with little intellect or sanity at stake, and with a physicality--as a fledgling--that can be controlled."

  "And this fledgling would be kept a prisoner, of course."

  "Inevitably," he said. His arms dropped to his sides.

  Inside me the Voice gave a long low agonized sigh.

  "Lestat, if it's in your mind, it's going to go for your mind. And you must call us, all of us, to your aid if this thing begins to push you to the brink."

  "I know that, Marius," I said. "I've never known myself, but I know when I'm not myself. That is certain."

  He gave a soft despairing smile and shook his head.

  I went out.

  I went back to the French library.

  Someone had been in here, one of those quiet, strange mortal servants of Armand's who went about the house like obedient somnambulists--and this one had dusted and polished, and laid out a soft green silk cover for me, over the back of the darker green damask couch.

  The two small lamps burned on the desk.

  I turned on the computer long enough to confirm at clear volume what I already knew. Benji was broadcasting vigorously. No Burnings anywhere on the planet. No word of the Voice from far and wide. No calls coming in from desperate victims.

  I shut off the machine.

  I knew he was with me. That subtle touch, that embrace of invisible fingers on the back of my neck.