Queen of the Damned

by Anne Rice

  But the coven house was near, Armand had explained, big tumbledown mansion one block from the park, and some of them were still hanging back in there plotting Lestat’s ruin. Armand wanted to pass close, just for a moment, know what was going on.

  “Looking for someone?” Daniel had asked. “Answer me, are you pleased with me or not?”

  What had he seen in Armand’s face? A sudden flare of humor, lust? Armand had hurried him along the dirty stained pavements, past the bars, the cafés, the stores crowded with stinking old clothes, the fancy clubs with their gilded letters on the greasy plate glass and overhead fans stirring the fumes with gilded wooden blades, while the potted ferns died a slow death in the heat and the semidarkness. Past the first little children—“Trick or treat!”—in their taffeta and glitter costumes.

  Armand had stopped, at once surrounded by tiny upturned faces covered in store-bought masks, plastic spooks, ghouls, witches; a lovely warm light had filled his brown eyes; with both hands he’d dropped shiny silver dollars in their little candy sacks, then taken Daniel by the arm and led him on.

  “I love it well enough the way you turned out,” he had whispered with a sudden irrepressible smile, the warmth still there. “You’re my firstborn,” he’d said. Was there a catch in his throat, a sudden glancing from right to left as if he’d found himself cornered? Back to the business at hand. “Be patient. I am being afraid for us both, remember?”

  Oh, we shall go to the stars together! Nothing can stop us. All the ghosts running through these streets are mortal!

  Then the coven house had blown up.

  He’d heard the blast before he saw it—and a sudden rolling plume of flame and smoke, accompanied by a shrill sound he would never before have detected: preternatural screams like silver paper curling in the heat. Sudden scatter of shaggy-haired humans running to see the blaze.

  Armand had shoved Daniel off the street, into the stagnant air of a narrow liquor store. Bilious glare; sweat and reek of tobacco; mortals, oblivious to the nearby conflagration, reading the big glossy girlie magazines. Armand had pushed him to the very rear of the tiny corridor. Old lady buying tiny carton of milk and two cans of cat food out of the icebox. No way out of here.

  But how could one hide from the thing that was passing over, from the deafening sound that mortals could not even hear? He’d lifted his hands to his ears, but that was foolish, useless. Death out there in alleyways. Things like him running through the debris of backyards, caught, burnt in their tracks. He saw it in sputtering flashes. Then nothing. Ringing silence. The clanging bells and squealing tires of the mortal world.

  Vet he’d been too enthralled still to be afraid. Every second was eternal, the frost on the icebox door beautiful. The old lady with the milk in her hand, eyes like two small cobalt stones.

  Armand’s face had gone blank beneath the mask of his dark glasses, hands slipped into his tight pants pockets. The tiny bell on the door jangled as a young man entered, bought a single bottle of German beer, and went out.

  “It’s over, isn’t it?”

  “For now,” Armand had answered.

  Not until they’d gotten in the cab did he say more.

  “It knew we were there; it heard us.”

  “Then why didn’t it—?”

  “I don’t know. I only know it knew we were there. It knew before we found shelter.”

  AND now, push and shove inside the hall, and he loved it, the crowd carrying them closer and closer to the inner doors. He could not even raise his arms, so tight was the press; yet young men and women elbowed past him, buffeted him with delicious shocks; he laughed again as he saw the life-sized posters of Lestat plastered to the walls.

  He felt Armand’s fingers against his back; he felt a subtle change in Armand’s whole body. A red-haired woman up ahead had turned around and was facing them as she was moved along towards the open door.

  A soft warm shock passed through Daniel. “Armand, the red hair.” So like the twins in the dream! It seemed her green eyes locked on him as he said, “Armand, the twins!”

  Then her face vanished as she turned away again and disappeared inside the hall.

  “No,” Armand whispered. Small shake of his head. He was in a silent fury, Daniel could feel it. He had the rigid glassy look he always got when profoundly offended. “Talamasca,” he whispered, with a faint uncharacteristic sneer.

  “Talamasca.” The word struck Daniel suddenly as beautiful. Talamasca. He broke it down from the Latin, understood its parts. Somewhere out of his memory bank it came: animal mask. Old word for witch or shaman.

  “But what does it really mean?” he asked.

  “It means Lestat is a fool,” Armand said. Flicker of deep pain in his eyes. “But it makes no difference now.”

  Khayman

  KHAYMAN watched from the archway as the Vampire Lestat’s car entered the gates of the parking lot. Almost invisible Khayman was, even in the stylish denim coat and pants he’d stolen earlier from a shop manikin. He didn’t need the silver glasses that covered his eyes. His glowing skin didn’t matter. Not when everywhere he looked he saw masks and paint, glitter and gauze and sequined costumes.

  He moved closer to Lestat, as if swimming through the wriggling bodies of the youngsters who mobbed the car. At last he glimpsed the creature’s blond hair, and then his violet blue eyes as he smiled and blew kisses to his adorers. Such charm the devil had. He drove the car himself, gunning the motor and forcing the bumper against these tender little humans even as he flirted, winked, seduced, as if he and his foot on the gas pedal weren’t connected to each other.

  Exhilaration. Triumph. That’s what Lestat felt and knew at this moment. And even his reticent companion, Louis, the dark-haired one in the car beside him, staring timidly at the screaming children as if they were birds of paradise, didn’t understand what was truly happening.

  Neither knew that the Queen had waked. Neither knew the dreams of the twins. Their ignorance was astonishing. And their young minds were so easy to scan. Apparently the Vampire Lestat, who had hidden himself quite well until this night, was now prepared to do battle with everyone. He wore his thoughts and intentions like a badge of honor.

  “Hunt us down!” That’s what he said aloud to his fans, though they didn’t hear. “Kill us. We’re evil. We’re bad. It’s perfectly fine to cheer and sing with us now. But when you catch on, well, then the serious business will begin. And you’ll remember that I never lied to you.”

  For one instant his eyes and Khayman’s eyes met. I want to be good! I would die for that! But there was no recognition of who or what received this message.

  Louis, the watcher, the patient one, was there on account of love pure and simple. The two had found each other only last night, and theirs had been an extraordinary reunion. Louis would go where Lestat led him. Louis would perish if Lestat perished. But their fears and hopes for this night were heartbreakingly human.

  They did not even guess that the Queen’s wrath was close at hand, that she’d burnt the San Francisco coven house within the hour. Or that the infamous vampire tavern on Castro Street was burning now, as the Queen hunted down those fleeing from it.

  But then the many blood drinkers scattered throughout this crowd did not know these simple facts either. They were too young to hear the warnings of the old, to hear the screams of the doomed as they perished. The dreams of the twins had only confused them. From various points, they glared at Lestat, overcome with hatred or religious fervor. They would destroy him or make of him a god. They did not guess at the danger that awaited them.

  But what of the twins themselves? What was the meaning of the dreams?

  Khayman watched the car move on, forcing its way towards the back of the auditorium. He looked up at the stars overhead, the tiny pinpricks of light behind the mist that hung over the city. He thought he could feel the closeness of his old sovereign.

  He turned back towards the auditorium and made his way carefully through the press. To fo
rget his strength in such a crowd as this would have been disaster. He would bruise flesh and break bones without even feeling it.

  He took one last look at the sky, and then he went inside, easily befuddling the ticket taker as he went through the little turnstile and towards the nearest stairway.

  The auditorium was almost filled. He looked about himself thoughtfully, savoring the moment somewhat as he savored everything. The hall itself was nothing, a shell of a place to hold light and sound—utterly modern and unredeemably ugly.

  But the mortals, how pretty they were, glistering with health, their pockets full of gold, sound bodies everywhere, in which no organ had been eaten by the worms of disease, no bone ever broken.

  In fact the sanitized well-being of this entire city rather amazed Khayman. True, he’d seen wealth in Europe such as he could never have imagined, but nothing equaled the flawless surface of this small and over-populated place, even to the San Francisco peasantry, whose tiny stucco cottages were choked with luxuries of every description. Driveways here were jammed with handsome automobiles. Paupers drew their money from bank machines with magic plastic cards. No slums anywhere. Great towers the city had, and fabulous hostelries; mansions in profusion; yet girded as it was by sea and mountains and the glittering waters of the Bay, it seemed not so much a capital as a resort, an escape from the world’s greater pain and ugliness.

  No wonder Lestat had chosen this place to throw down the gauntlet. In the main, these pampered children were good. Deprivation had never wounded or weakened them. They might prove perfect combatants for real evil. That is, when they came to realize that the symbol and the thing were one and the same. Wake up and smell the blood, young ones.

  But would there be time for that now?

  Lestat’s great scheme, whatever it truly was, might be stillborn; for surely the Queen had a scheme of her own, and Lestat knew nothing of it.

  Khayman made his way now to the top of the hall. To the very last row of wooden seats where he had been earlier. He settled comfortably in the same spot, pushing aside the two “vampire books,” which still lay on the floor, unnoticed.

  Earlier, he had devoured the texts—Louis’s testament: “Behold, the void.” And Lestat’s history: “And this and this and this, and it means nothing.” They had clarified for him many things. And what Khayman had divined of Lestat’s intentions had been confirmed completely. But of the mystery of the twins, of course, the book told nothing.

  And as for the Queen’s true intent, that continued to baffle him.

  She had slain hundreds of blood drinkers the world over, yet left others unharmed.

  Even now, Marius lived. In destroying her shrine, she had punished him but not killed him, which would have been simple. He called to the older ones from his prison of ice, warning, begging for assistance. And effortlessly, Khayman sensed two immortals moving to answer Marius’s call, though one, Marius’s own child, could not even hear it. Pandora was that one’s name; she was a lone one, a strong one. The other, called Santino, did not have her power, but he could hear Marius’s voice, as he struggled to keep pace with her.

  Without doubt the Queen could have struck them down had she chosen to do it. Yet on and on they moved, clearly visible, clearly audible, yet unmolested.

  How did the Queen make such choices? Surely there were those in this very hall whom she had spared for some purpose. . . .

  Daniel

  THEY had reached the doors, and now had to push the last few feet down a narrow ramp into the giant open oval of the main floor.

  The crowd loosened, like marbles rolling in all directions. Daniel moved towards the center, his fingers hooked around Armand’s belt so as not to lose him, his eyes roaming over the horseshoe-shaped theater, the high banks of seats rising to the ceiling. Mortals everywhere swarmed the cement stairs, or hung over iron railings, or flowed into the milling crowd around him.

  A blur it was suddenly, the noise of it like the low grind of a giant machine. But then in the moment of deliberately distorted vision, he saw the others. He saw the simple, inescapable difference between the living and the dead. Beings like himself in every direction, concealed in the mortal forest, yet shining like the eyes of an owl in the light of the moon. No paint or dark glasses or shapeless hats or hooded capes could ever conceivably hide them from each other. And it wasn’t merely the unearthly sheen to their faces or hands. It was the slow, lissome grace of their movements, as if they were more spirit than flesh.

  Ah, my brothers and sisters, at last!

  But it was hatred he felt around him. A rather dishonest hatred! They loved Lestat and condemned him simultaneously. They loved the very act of hating, punishing. Suddenly, he caught the eye of a powerful hulking creature with greasy black hair who bared his fangs in an ugly flash and then revealed the plan in stunning completeness. Beyond the prying eyes of mortals, they would hack Lestat’s limbs from his body; they would sever his head; then the remains would be burnt on a pyre by the sea. The end of the monster and his legend. Are you with us or against us?

  Daniel laughed out loud. “You’ll never kill him,” Daniel said. Yet he gaped as he glimpsed the sharpened scythe the creature held against his chest inside his coat. Then the beast turned and vanished. Daniel gazed upwards through the smoky light. One of them now. Know all their secrets! He felt giddy, on the verge of madness.

  Armand’s hand closed on his shoulder. They had come to the very center of the main floor. The crowd was getting denser by the second. Pretty girls in black silk gowns shoved and pushed against the crude bikers in their worn black leather. Soft feathers brushed his cheek; he saw a red devil with giant horns; a bony skeleton face topped with golden curls and pearl combs. Random cries rose in the bluish gloom. The bikers howled like wolves; someone shouted “Lestat” in a deafening voice, and others took up the call instantly.

  Armand again had the lost expression, the expression that belonged to deep concentration, as if what he saw before him meant nothing at all.

  “Thirty perhaps,” he whispered in Daniel’s ear, “no more than that, and one or two so old they could destroy the rest of us in an instant.”

  “Where, tell me where?”

  “Listen,” Armand said. “And see for yourself. There is no hiding from them.”

  Khayman

  MAHARET’S child. Jessica. The thought caught Khayman off guard. Protect Maharet’s child. Somehow escape from here.

  He roused himself, senses sharpened. He’d been listening to Marius again, Marius trying to reach the young untuned ears of the Vampire Lestat, who preened backstage, before a broken mirror. What could this mean, Maharet’s child, Jessica, and when the thoughts pertained, without doubt, to a mortal woman?

  It came again, the unexpected communication of some strong yet unveiled mind: Take care of Jesse. Somehow stop the Mother. . . . But there were no words really—it was no more than a shining glimpse into another’s soul, a sparkling overflow.

  Khayman’s eyes moved slowly over the balconies opposite, over the swarming main floor. Far away in some remote corner of the city, an old one wandered, full of fear of the Queen yet longing to look upon her face. He had come here to die, but to know her face in the final instant. Khayman closed his eyes to shut this out.

  Then he heard it again suddenly. Jessica, my Jessica. And behind the soulful call, the knowledge of Maharet! The sudden vision of Maharet, enshrined in love, and ancient and white as he himself was. It was a moment of stunning pain. He slumped back in the wooden seat and bowed his head just a little. Then he looked out again over the steel rafters, the ugly tangles of black wire and rusted cylindrical lights. Where are you?

  There, far away against the opposite wall, he saw the figure from whom the thoughts were coming. Ah, the oldest he had seen so far. A giant Nordic blood drinker, seasoned and cunning, dressed in coarse brown rawhide garments, with flowing straw-colored hair, his heavy brows and small deep-set eyes giving him a brooding expression.

&n
bsp; The being was tracking a small mortal woman who fought her way through the crowds of the main floor. Jesse, Maharet’s mortal daughter.

  Maddened, disbelieving, Khayman focused tightly on the small woman. He felt his eyes mist with tears as he saw the astonishing resemblance. Here was Maharet’s long coppery red hair, curling, thick, and the same tall birdlike frame, the same clever and curious green eyes, sweeping the scene as the female let herself be turned around and around by those who pushed against her.

  Maharet’s profile. Maharet’s skin, which had been so pale and almost luminous in life, so like the inner lining of a seashell.

  In a sudden vivid memory, he saw Maharet’s skin through the mesh of his own dark fingers. As he had pushed her face to the side during the rape, his fingertips had touched the delicate folds of flesh over her eyes. Not till a year later had they plucked out her eyes and he had been there remembering the moment, the feel of the flesh. That is before he had picked up the eyes themselves and . . . .

  He shuddered. He felt a sharp pain in his lungs. His memory wasn’t going to fail him. He would not slip away from this moment, the happy clown remembering nothing.

  Maharet’s child, all right. But how? Through how many generations had these characteristics survived to flower again in this small female who appeared to be fighting her way towards the stage at the end of the hall?

  It was not impossible, of course. He quickly realized it. Perhaps three hundred ancestors stood between this twentieth-century woman and the long ago afternoon when he had put on the King’s medallion and stepped down from the dais to commit the King’s rape. Maybe even less than that. A mere fraction of this crowd, to put it more neatly in perspective.

  But more astonishing than this, that Maharet knew her own descendants. And know this woman Maharet did. The tall blood drinker’s mind yielded that fact immediately.

  He scanned the tall Nordic one. Maharet, alive. Maharet, the guardian of her mortal family. Maharet, the embodiment of illimitable strength and will. Maharet who had given him, this blond servant, no explanation of the dreams of the twins, but had sent him here instead to do her bidding: save Jessica.