The Vampire Armand tvc-6

by Anne Rice

  Quickly, he let the man drop. Only the red-haired fellow observed all this. And he seemed in his intoxication not to know what to make of it. Indeed he raised one eye, wondering, and drank again from his filthy sloppy cup. He licked the fingers of his right hand, one by one, as if he were a cat, as my Master dropped his black-haired companion facedown on the table, indeed, right into a plate of fruit.

  "Drunken idiot," said the red-haired man. "No one fights for valor, or honor, or decency."

  "Not many in any event," said my Master looking down at him.

  "They broke the world in half, those Turks," said the red-haired man, still staring at the dead one, who surely stared stupidly at him from the smashed plate. I couldn't see the dead man's face, but it excited me tremendously that he was dead.

  "Come now, gentlemen," said my Master, "and you, Sir, come here, you who gave my child so many rings."

  "Is he your son, Sir?" cried the blond humpback, who was finally on his feet. He pushed his friends away from him. He turned and went to the summons. "I'll father him better than you ever did."

  My Master appeared suddenly and without a sound on our side of the table. His garments settled at once, as if he had only taken a step. The red-haired man did not even seem to see it.

  "Skanderbeg, the great Skanderbeg, I raise a toast to him," said the red-haired man, to himself apparently. "He's been dead too long, and give me but five Skanderbegs and I'd raise a new Crusade to take back our city from the Turks."

  "Indeed, who wouldn't with five Skanderbegs," said the elderly man further down the table, the one nibbling and tearing at the joint. He wiped his mouth with his naked wrist. "But there is no general like unto Skanderbeg, and there never was, save the man himself. What's the matter with Ludovico? You fool!" He stood up.

  My Master had put his arm around the blond one, who pushed at him, quite dismayed that my Master was immovable. Now as the two dancers offered my Master pushes and shoves to free their companion, my Master again planted his fatal kiss. He lifted the chin of the blond one and went right for the big artery in the neck. He swung the man around and appeared to draw up the blood from him in one great draught. In a flash, he closed the man's eyes with two white fingers and let the body slip to the floor.

  "It is your time to die, good Sirs," he said to the dancers who now backed away from him.

  One of them pulled his sword.

  "Don't be so stupid!" shouted his companion. "You're drunk. You'll never-. "

  "No, you won't, " said my Master with a little sigh. His lips were more pink than I had ever seen them, and the blood he'd drunk paraded in his cheeks. Even his eyes had a greater gloss, and a greater gleam.

  He closed his very hand over the man's sword and with the press of his thumb snapped the metal, so that the man held only a fragment in his hand.

  "How dare you!" cried the man.

  "How did you is more to the point!" sang out the red-haired man at the table. "Cracked in half, is it? What kind of steel is that?"

  The joint nibbler laughed very loud and threw back his head. He tore more meat from the bone.

  My Master reached out and plucked from time and space the wielder of the broken sword, and now to bare the vein, broke the man's neck with a loud snap.

  It seemed the other three had heard it-the one who ate the joint, the wary dancer and the man with the red hair.

  It was the last of the dancers whom my Master embraced next. He caught the man's face in his hands as if it were love, and drank again, gasping the man's throat so that I saw the blood just for an instant, a veritable deluge of it, which my Master then covered with his mouth and his bent head.

  I could see the blood pump into my Master's hand. I couldn't wait for him to raise his head, and this he did very soon, sooner even than he had left his last victim, and he looked at me dreamily and his countenance was all afire. He looked as human as any man in the room, even crazed with his special drink, as they were with their common wine.

  His vagrant blond curls were plastered to his forehead by the sweat that rose in him, and I saw it was a fine sheen of blood.

  The music abruptly stopped.

  It was not the mayhem but the sight of my Master which had stopped it, as he let this last victim slip, a loose sack of bones, to the floor.

  "Requiem, " I said again. "Their ghosts will thank you, kind Gentlemen. "

  "Either that, " said Marius to the musicians as he drew close, "or fly the room. "

  "I say fly the room," whispered the lute player. At once they all turned and made for the doors. They pulled and pulled upon the latch in their haste, cursing and shouting.

  My Master backed up and gathered the jeweled rings from around the chair where I'd been seated before.

  "My boys, you go without payment," he said.

  In their helpless whining fear, they turned and beheld the rings being tossed to them, and stupidly and eagerly and fall of shame, they each caught a single treasure as my Master aimed it.

  Then the doors flew open and cracked against the walls.

  Out they went, all but scraping the doorframe, and the doors then shut.

  "That's clever!" remarked the man with the joint which he laid aside at last, as all the meat was gone. "How you'd do it, Marius De Romanus?

  I hear tell you're a powerful magician. Don't know why the Great Council doesn't call you up on charges of witchcraft. Must be all the money you have, no?"

  I stared at my Master. Never had I seen him so lovely as now when he was flushed with this new blood. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to go into his arms. His eyes were drunken and soft as he looked at me.

  But he broke off his seductive stare and went back to the table, and around it properly, and stood beside the man who had feasted on the joint.

  The gray-haired man looked up at him and then glanced at his red­haired companion. "Don't be a fool, Martino," he said to the redhead. "It's probably perfectly legal to be a witch in the Veneto as long as a man pays his tax. Put your money in Martino's bank, Marius De Romanus."

  "Ah, but I do," said Marius De Romanus, my Master, "and it earns me quite a good return."

  He sat down again between the dead man and the red-haired man, who seemed quite delighted and exhilarated to have him return.

  "Martino," said my Master. "Let's talk some more of the fall of Empires. Your Father, why was he with the Genoese?"

  The red-haired man, now quite aflame with the whole discussion, declared with pride that his Father had been the representative of the family bank in Constantinople, and that he had died afterwards due to the wounds he'd suffered on that last and awful day.

  "He saw it," said the red-haired man, "he saw the women and children slaughtered. He saw the priests torn from the altars of Santa Sofia. He knows the secret."

  "The secret!" scoffed the elderly man. He moved down the table and, with a big swipe of his left arm, shoved the dead man off over the bench so that he fell back on the floor.

  "Good God, you heartless bastard," said the red-haired man. "Did you hear his skull crack? Don't treat my guest in that manner, not if you want to live."

  I came closer to the table.

  "Yes, do come on, pretty one," said the redhead. "Sit down." He turned on me his blazing golden eyes. "Sit here, opposite me. Good God, look at Francisco there. I swear I heard his skull crack."

  "He's dead," said Marius softly. "It's all right for the moment, don't worry on it." His face was all the more bright from the blood he'd drunk. Indeed the color was even now, and radiant overall, and his hair seemed all the fairer against his blushing skin. A tiny spider's web of veins lived within each of his eyes, not detracting one jot from their awesome lustrous beauty.

  "Oh, all right, fine, they're dead," said the redhead, with a shrug.

  "Yes, I was telling you, and you damned well better mark my words because I know. The priests, the priests picked up the sacred chalice and the Sacred Host and they went into a hiding place in Santa Sofia. My Father saw this wi
th his own eyes. I know the secret."

  "Eyes, eyes, eyes," said the elderly man. "Your Father must have been a peacock to have had so many eyes!"

  "Shut up or I'll slit your throat," said the red-haired man. "Look what you did to Francisco, knocking him over like that. Good God!" He made the Sign of the Cross rather lazily. "There's blood coming from the back of his head."

  My Master turned and, leaning down, swept up five fingerfuls of this blood. He turned to me slowly and then to the redhead. He sucked the blood off one finger. "Dead," he said with a little smile. "But it's plenty warm and thick." He smiled slowly.

  The red-haired man was as fascinated as a child at a puppet show.

  My Master extended his bloody fingers, palm up, and made a smile as if to say, "You want to taste it?"

  The red-haired man grabbed Marius's wrist and licked the blood off his forefinger and thumb. "Hmmm, very good," he said. "All my companions are of the best blood."

  "You're telling me," said my Master. I couldn't rip my eyes off him, off his changing face. It seemed now his cheeks did darken, or maybe it was only their curve as he smiled. His lips were rosy.

  "And I'm not finished, Amadeo," he whispered. "I've only begun."

  "He's not bad hurt!" insisted the elderly man. He studied the victim on the floor. He was worried. Had he killed him? "It's just a mere cut on the back of his head, that's all. Isn't it?"

  "Yes, a tiny cut," said Marius. "What's this secret, my dear friend?" He had his back to the gray-haired man, speaking to the redhead with much more interest as he had been all along.

  "Yes, please," I said. "What's the secret, Sir?" I asked. "Is that the secret, that the priests ran?"

  "No, child, don't be dense!" said the red-haired man looking across the table at me. He was powerfully beautiful. Had Bianca loved him? She never said.

  "The secret, the secret," he said. "If you don't believe in this secret, then you'll believe nothing, nothing sacred or otherwise."

  He lifted his goblet. It was empty. I picked up the pitcher and filled it with the dark lovely-smelling red wine. I considered taking a taste of it, then a revulsion filled me.

  "Nonsense," whispered my Master. "Drink to their passing. Go ahead. There's a clean goblet."

  "Oh, yes, forgive me," said the redhead. "I haven't even offered you a cup. Good God, to think I threw a mere table diamond on the board for you, when I would have your love." He picked up the goblet, a rich fancy thing of inlaid silver with tiny stones. I saw now that all the goblets were a set, all carved with tiny delicate figures and set with these same bright little stones. He set down this goblet for me with a clonk. He took the pitcher from me and filled the goblet and then thrust it at me.

  I thought I would become so sick I'd vomit on the floor. I looked up at him, at his near sweet face and his pretty blazing red hair. He gave a boyish smile, showing small but perfect white teeth, very pearly, and he seemed to dote on me and to drift, not uttering a word.

  "Take it, drink," said my Master. "Yours is a dangerous road, Amadeo, drink for knowledge and drink for strength."

  "You don't mock me now, Sir, do you?" I asked, staring at the red­haired man though I spoke to Marius.

  "I love you, Sir, as I always have," said my Master, "but you do see something in what I say, for I'm coarsened by human blood. It's always the fact. Only in starvation do I find an ethereal purity."

  "Ah, and you turn me from penance at every juncture," I said, "towards the senses, towards pleasure."

  The red-haired man and I had locked eyes. Yet I heard Marius answer me.

  "It's a penance to kill, Amadeo, that's the rub. It's a penance to slay for nothing, nothing, not 'honor, not valor, not decency,' as our friend says here."

  "Yes!" said "our friend," who turned to Marius and then back to me. "Drink!" He thrust the goblet at me.

  "And when it's all done, Amadeo, gather up these goblets for me and bring them home so I might have a trophy of my failure and my defeat, for they will be one and the same, and a lesson for you as well. Seldom is it all so rich and clear as it is to me now."

  The red-haired man leaned forward, deep into the flirt, and put the goblet right against my lip. "Little David, you'll grow up to be the King, remember? Oh, I would worship you now, tender-cheeked little man that you are, and beg for one psalm from your harp, just one, were it given with your own will."

  My Master whispered low, "Can you grant a man's dying request?"

  "I think he is dead!" said the gray-haired man with obnoxious loud­ness. "Look, Martino, I think I did kill him; his head's bleeding like a damned tomato. Look!"

  "Oh, shut up about him!" said Martino, the redhead, without taking his eyes off mine. "Do grant a dying man's request, little David," he went on. "We are all dying, and I for you, and that you die with me, just a little, Sir, in my arms? Let us make a little game of it. It will amuse you, Marius De Romanus. You'll see I ride him and stroke him with one artful rhythm, and you'll behold a sculpture of flesh that becomes a fountain, as what I pump into him comes forth from him in my hand."

  He cupped his hand as if he had my organ already in it. He kept his eyes on me. Then in a low whisper, he said, "I'm too soft to make my sculpture. Let me drink it from you. Have mercy on the parched."

  I snatched the goblet out of his wavering hand and drank down the wine. My body tightened. I thought the wine would come back up and spew. I made it go down. I looked at my Master.

  "This is ugly, I hate it."

  "Oh, nonsense," he said, barely moving his lips. "There's beauty all around!"

  "Damned if he isn't dead," said the gray-haired man. He kicked the body of Francisco on the floor. "Martino, I'm out of here."

  "Stay, Sir," said Marius. "I would kiss you good night." He clapped his hand over the gray-haired man's wrist and lunged at his throat, but what did it look like to the red-haired one, who gave it only a bleary glance before he continued his worship? He filled my goblet again.

  A moan came from the gray-haired man, or was it from Marius?

  I was petrified. When he turned from his victim, I would see even more blood teeming in him, and I would have given all the world to see him white again, my marble god, my graven Father in our private bed.

  The red-haired man rose before me as he leant over the table and put his wet lips on mine. "I die for you, boy!" he said.

  "No, you die for nothing," said Marius.

  "Master, not him, please!" I cried.

  I fell back, nearly losing my balance on the bench. My Master's arm had come between us, and his hand covered the red-haired man's shoulder.

  "What's the secret, Sir?" I cried frantically, "the secret of Santa Sofia, the one we must believe?"

  The red-haired man was utterly befuddled. He knew he was drunk. He knew things around him didn't make sense. But he thought it was because he was drunk. He looked at Marius's arm across his chest, and he even turned and looked at the fingers clutching his shoulder. Then he looked at Marius and so did I.

  Marius was human, utterly human. There was no trace of the impermeable and indestructible god left. His eyes and his face simmered in the blood. He was flushed as a man from running, and his lips were bloody, and when he licked them now, his tongue was ruby red. He smiled at Martino, the last of them, the only one left alive.

  Martino pulled his gaze away from Marius and looked at me. At once he softened and lost his alarm. He spoke with reverence.

  "In the midst of the siege, as the Turks stormed the church, some of the priests left the altar of Santa Sofia," he said. "They took with them the chalice and the Blessed Sacrament, our Lord's Body and Blood. They are hidden this very day in the secret chambers of Santa Sofia, and on the very moment that we take back the city, on the very moment when we take back the great church of Santa Sofia, when we drive the Turks out of our capital, those priests, those very priests will return. They'll come out of their hiding place and go up the steps of the altar, and they will resume the Mass at the very point w
here they were forced to stop."

  "Ah," I said, sighing and marveling at it. "Master," I said softly. "That's a good enough secret to save a man's life, isn't it?"

  "No," said Marius. "I know the story, and he made our Bianca a whore."

  The red-haired man strained to follow our words, to fathom the depth of our exchange.

  "A whore? Bianca? A murderer ten times over, Sir, but not a whore. Nothing so simple as a whore." He studied Marius as though he thought this heated passionately florid man was beautiful, indeed. And well he was.

  "Ah, but you taught her the art of murder," said Marius almost tenderly, his fingers massaging the man's shoulder, while with his left arm he reached around Martino's back, until his left hand might lock on the man's shoulder with his right. He bent his forehead to touch Martino's temple.

  "Hmmm," Martino shook himself all over. "I've drunk too much. I never taught her any such thing."

  "Ah, but you did, you taught her, and to kill for such paltry sums."

  "Master, what is it to us?"

  "My son forgets himself," said Marius, still looking at Martino. "He forgets that I am bound to kill you on behalf of our sweet lady, whom you so finagled into your dark, sticky plots."

  "She rendered me a service," said Martino. "Let me have the boy!"

  "Beg pardon?"

  "You mean to kill me, so do it. But let me have the boy. A kiss, Sir, that's all I ask. A kiss, that is the world. I'm too drunk for anything else!"

  "Please, Master, I can't endure this," I said.

  "Then, how will you endure eternity, my child? Don't you know that's what I mean to give you? What power under God is there that can break me?" He threw a fierce angry glance at me, but it seemed more artifice than true emotion.

  "I've learnt my lessons," I said. "I only hate to see him die."

  "Ah, yes, then you have learnt. Martino, kiss my child if he'll allow it, and mark you, be gentle when you do."

  It was I who leant across the table now and planted my kiss on the man's cheek. He turned and caught my mouth with his, hungry, sour with wine, but enticingly, electrically hot.