Queen of the Damned

by Anne Rice

  But what was this other being? The one who sat to the right of Maharet, who stood directly opposite Marius at the far end? Now, this one truly gave him a shock. The other twin was his first rash conjecture as he stared at her green eyes and her coppery red hair.

  But this being had been alive yesterday, surely. And he could find no explanation for her strength, her frigid whiteness; the piercing manner in which she stared at him; and the overwhelming telepathic power that emanated from her, a cascade of dark and finely delineated images which she seemed unable to control. She was seeing with uncanny accuracy the painting he had done centuries ago of his Amadeo, surrounded by black-winged angels as he knelt in prayer. A chill passed over Marius.

  “In the crypt of the Talamasca,” he whispered. “My painting?” He laughed, rudely, venomously. “And so it’s there!”

  The creature was frightened; she hadn’t meant to reveal her thoughts. Protective of the Talamasca, and hopelessly confused, she shrank back into herself. Her body seemed to grow smaller and yet to redouble its power. A monster. A monster with green eyes and delicate bones. Born yesterday, yes, exactly as he had figured it; there was living tissue in her; and suddenly he understood all about her. This one, named Jesse, had been made by Maharet. This one was an actual human descendant of the woman; and now she had become the fledgling of her ancient mother. The scope of it astonished him and frightened him slightly. The blood racing through the young one’s veins had a potency that was unimaginable to Marius. She was absolutely without thirst; yet she wasn’t even really dead.

  But he must stop this, this merciless and rummaging appraisal. They were, after all, waiting for him. Yet he could not help but wonder where in God’s name were his own mortal descendants, spawn of the nephews and nieces he had so loved when he was alive? For a few hundred years, true, he had followed their progress; but finally, he could no longer recognize them; he could no longer recognize Rome itself. And he had let it all go into darkness, as Rome had passed into darkness. Yet surely there were those walking the earth today who had that old family blood in their veins.

  He continued to stare at the red-haired young one. How she resembled her great mother; tall, yet frail of bone, beautiful yet severe. Some great secret here, something to do with the lineage, the family. . . . She wore soft dark clothes rather similar to those of the ancient one; her hands were immaculate; she wore no scent or paint.

  They were all of them magnificent in their own way. The tall heavily built Santino was elegant in his priestly black, with his lustrous black eyes and a sensuous mouth. Even the unkempt Mael had a savage and overpowering presence as he glowered at the ancient woman with an obvious mixture of love and hate. Armand’s angelic face was beyond description; and the boy Daniel, a vision with his ashen hair and gleaming violet eyes.

  Was nobody ugly ever given immortality? Or did the dark magic simply make beauty out of whatever sacrifice was thrown into the blaze? But Gabrielle had been a lovely thing in life surely, with all her son’s courage and none of his impetuosity, and Louis, ah, well, Louis of course had been picked for the exquisite bones of his face, for the depth of his green eyes. He had been picked for the inveterate attitude of somber appreciation that he revealed now. He looked like a human being lost among them, his face softened with color and feeling; his body curiously defenseless; his eyes wondering and sad. Even Khayman had an undeniable perfection of face and form, horrifying as the total effect had come to be.

  As for Pandora, he saw her alive and mortal when he looked at her, he saw the eager innocent woman who had come to him so many eons ago in the ink-black nighttime streets of Antioch, begging to be made immortal, not the remote and melancholy being who sat so still now in her simple biblical robes, staring through the glass wall opposite her at the fading galaxy beyond the thickening clouds.

  Even Eric, bleached by the centuries and faintly radiant, retained, as Maharet did, an air of great human feeling, made all the more appealing by a beguiling androgynous grace.

  The fact was, Marius had never laid eyes on such an assemblage—a gathering of immortals of all ages from the newborn to the most ancient; and each endowed with immeasurable powers and weaknesses, even to the delirious young man whom Armand had skillfully created with all the unspent virtue of his virgin blood. Marius doubted that such a “coven” had ever come together before.

  And how did he fit into the picture, he who had been the eldest of his own carefully controlled universe in which the ancients had been silent gods? The winds had cleansed him of the dried blood that had clung to his face and shoulder-length hair. His long black cloak was damp from the snows from which he’d come. And as he approached the table, as he waited belligerently for Maharet to tell him he might be seated, he fancied he looked as much the monster as the others did, his blue eyes surely cold with the animosity that was burning him from within.

  “Please,” she said to him graciously. She gestured to the empty wooden chair before him, a place of honor obviously, at the foot of the table; that is, if one conceded that she stood at the head.

  Comfortable it was, not like so much modern furniture. Its curved back felt good to him as he seated himself, and he could rest his hand on the arm, that was good, too. Armand took the empty chair to his right.

  Maharet seated herself without a sound. She rested her hands with fingers folded on the polished wood before her. She bowed her head as if collecting her thoughts to begin.

  “Are we all that is left?” Marius asked. “Other than the Queen and the brat prince and—” He paused.

  A ripple of silent confusion passed through the others. The mute twin, where was she? What was the mystery?

  “Yes,” Maharet answered soberly. “Other than the Queen, and the brat prince, and my sister. Yes, we are the only ones left. Or the only ones left who count.”

  She paused as if to let her words have their full effect. Her eyes gently took in the complete assembly.

  “Far off,” she said, “there may be others—old ones who choose to remain apart. Or those she hunts still, who are doomed. But we are what remains in terms of destiny or decision. Or intent.”

  “And my son,” Gabrielle said. Her voice was sharp, full of emotion, and subtle disregard for those present. “Will none of you tell me what she’s done with him and where he is?” She looked from the woman to Marius, fearlessly and desperately. “Surely you have the power to know where he is.”

  Her resemblance to Lestat touched Marius. It was from this one that Lestat had drawn his strength, without doubt. But there was a coldness in her that Lestat would never understand.

  “He’s with her, as I’ve already told you,” Khayman said, his voice deep and unhurried. “But beyond that she doesn’t let us know.”

  Gabrielle did not believe it, obviously. There was a pulling away in her, a desire to leave here, to go off alone. Nothing could have forced the others away from the table. But this one had made no such commitment to the meeting, it was clear.

  “Allow me to explain this,” Maharet said, “because it’s of the utmost importance. The Mother is skillful at cloaking herself, of course. But we of the early centuries have never been able to communicate silently with the Mother and the Father or with each other. We are all simply too close to the source of the power that makes us what we are. We are deaf and blind to each other’s minds just as master and fledgling are among you. Only as time passed and more and more blood drinkers were created did they acquire the power to communicate silently with each other as we have done with mortals all along.”

  “Then Akasha couldn’t find you,” Marius said, “you or Khayman—if you weren’t with us.”

  “That’s so. She must see us through your minds or not at all. And so we must see her through the minds of others. Except of course for a certain sound we hear now and then on the approach of the powerful, a sound that has to do with a great exertion of energy, and with breath and blood.”

  “Yes, that sound,” Daniel murmured softl
y. “That awful relentless sound.”

  “But is there nowhere we can hide from her?” Eric asked. “Those of us she can hear and see?” It was a young man’s voice, of course, and with a heavy undefinable accent, each word rather beautifully intoned.

  “You know there isn’t,” Maharet answered with explicit patience. “But we waste time talking of hiding. You are here either because she cannot kill you or she chooses not to. And so be it. We must go on.”

  “Or she hasn’t finished,” Eric said disgustedly. “She hasn’t made up her infernal mind on the matter of who shall die and who shall live!”

  “I think you are safe here,” Khayman said. “She had her chance with everyone present, did she not?”

  But that was just it, Marius realized. It was not at all clear that the Mother had had her chance with Eric, Eric who traveled, apparently, in the company of Maharet. Eric’s eyes locked on Maharet. There was some quick silent exchange but it wasn’t telepathic. What came clear to Marius was that Maharet had made Eric, and neither knew for certain whether Eric was too strong now for the Mother. Maharet was pleading for calm.

  “But Lestat, you can read his mind, can’t you?” Gabrielle said. “Can’t you discover them both through him?”

  “Not even I can always cover a pure and enormous distance,” Maharet answered. “If there were other blood drinkers left who could pick up Lestat’s thoughts and relay them to me, well, then of course I could find him in an instant. But in the main, those blood drinkers are no more. And Lestat has always been good at cloaking his presence; it’s natural to him. It’s always that way with the strong ones, the ones who are self-sufficient and aggressive. Wherever he is now, he instinctively shuts us out.”

  “She’s taken him,” Khayman said. He reached across the table and laid his hand on Gabrielle’s hand. “She’ll reveal everything to us when she is ready. And if she chooses to harm Lestat in the meantime there is absolutely nothing that any of us can do.”

  Marius almost laughed. It seemed these ancient ones thought statements of absolute truth were a comfort; what a curious combination of vitality and passivity they were. Had it been so at the dawn of recorded history? When people sensed the inevitable, they stood stock-still and accepted it? It was difficult for him to grasp.

  “The Mother won’t harm Lestat,” he said to Gabrielle, to all of them. “She loves him. And at its core it’s a common kind of love. She won’t harm him because she doesn’t want to harm herself. And she knows all his tricks, I’ll wager, just as we know them. He won’t be able to provoke her, though he’s probably foolish enough to try.”

  Gabrielle gave a little nod at that with a trace of a sad smile. It was her considered opinion that Lestat could provoke anyone, finally, given enough time and opportunity; but she let it pass.

  She was neither consoled nor resigned. She sat back in the wooden chair and stared past them as if they no longer existed. She felt no allegiance to this group; she felt no allegiance to anyone but Lestat.

  “All right then,” she said coldly. “Answer the crucial question. If I destroy this monster who’s taken my son, do we all die?”

  “How the hell are you going to destroy her?” Daniel asked in amazement.

  Eric sneered.

  She glanced at Daniel dismissively. Eric she ignored. She looked at Maharet. “Well, is the old myth true? If I waste this bitch, to use the vernacular, do I waste the rest of us too?”

  There was faint laughter in the gathering. Marius shook his head. But Maharet gave a little smile of acknowledgment as she nodded:

  “Yes. It was tried in the earlier times. It was tried by many a fool who didn’t believe it. The spirit who inhabits her animates us all. Destroy the host, you destroy the power. The young die first; the old wither slowly; the eldest perhaps would go last. But she is the Queen of the Damned, and the Damned can’t live without her. Enkil was only her consort, and that is why it does not matter now that she has slain him and drunk his blood to the last drop.”

  “The Queen of the Damned.” Marius whispered it aloud softly. There had been a strange inflection when Maharet had said it, as if memories had stirred in her, painful and awful, and undimmed by time. Undimmed as the dreams were undimmed. Again he had a sense of the starkness and severity of these ancient beings, for whom language perhaps, and all the thoughts governed by it, had not been needlessly complex.

  “Gabrielle,” Khayman said, pronouncing the name exquisitely, “we cannot help Lestat. We must use this time to make a plan.” He turned to Maharet. “The dreams, Maharet. Why have the dreams come to us now? This is what we all want to know.”

  There was a protracted silence. All present had known, in some form, these dreams. Only lightly had they touched Gabrielle and Louis, so lightly in fact that Gabrielle had, before this night, given no thought to them, and Louis, frightened by Lestat, had pushed them out of his mind. Even Pandora, who confessed no personal knowledge of them, had told Marius of Azim’s warning. Santino had called them horrid trances from which he couldn’t escape.

  Marius knew now that they had been a noxious spell for the young ones, Jesse and Daniel, almost as cruel as they had been for him.

  Yet Maharet did not respond. The pain in her eyes had intensified; Marius felt it like a soundless vibration. He felt the spasms in the tiny nerves.

  He bent forward slightly, folding his hands before him on the table.

  “Maharet,” he said. “Your sister is sending the dreams. Isn’t this so?”

  No answer.

  “Where is Mekare?” he pushed.

  Silence again.

  He felt the pain in her. And he was sorry, very sorry once more for the bluntness of his speech. But if he was to be of use here, he must push things to a conclusion. He thought of Akasha in the shrine again, though why he didn’t know. He thought of the smile on her face. He thought of Lestat—protectively, desperately. But Lestat was just a symbol now. A symbol of himself. Of them all.

  Maharet was looking at him in the strangest way, as if he were a mystery to her. She looked at the others. Finally she spoke:

  “You witnessed our separation,” she said quietly. “All of you. You saw it in the dreams. You saw the mob surround me and my sister; you saw them force us apart; in stone coffins they placed us, Mekare unable to cry out to me because they had cut out her tongue, and I unable to see her for the last time because they had taken my eyes.

  “But I saw through the minds of those who hurt us. I knew it was to the seashores that we were being taken. Mekare to the west; and I to the east.

  “Ten nights I drifted on the raft of pitch and logs, entombed alive in the stone coffin. And finally when the raft sank and the water lifted the stone lid, I was free. Blind, ravenous, I swam ashore and stole from the first poor mortal I encountered the eyes to see and the blood to live.

  “But Mekare? Into the great western ocean she had been cast—the waters that ran to the end of the world.

  “Yet from that first night on I searched for her; I searched through Europe, through Asia, through the southern jungles and the frozen lands of the north. Century after century I searched, finally crossing the western ocean when mortals did to take my quest to the New World as well.

  “I never found my sister. I never found a mortal or immortal who had set eyes upon her or heard her name. Then in this century, in the years after the second great war, in the high mountain jungles of Peru, the indisputable evidence of my sister’s presence was discovered by a lone archaeologist on the walls of a shallow cave—pictures my sister had created—of stick figures and crude pigment which told the tale of our lives together, the sufferings you all know.

  “But six thousand years ago these drawings had been carved into the stone. And six thousand years ago my sister had been taken from me. No other evidence of her existence was ever found.

  “Yet I have never abandoned the hope of finding my sister. I have always known, as only a twin might, that she walks this earth still, that I am not h
ere alone.

  “And now, within these last ten nights, I have, for the first time, proof that my sister is still with me. It has come to me through the dreams.

  “These are Mekare’s thoughts; Mekare’s images; Mekare’s rancor and pain.”

  Silence. All eyes were fixed on her. Marius was quietly stunned. He feared to be the one to speak again, but this was worse than he had imagined and the implications were now entirely clear.

  The origin of these dreams was almost certainly not a conscious survivor of the millennia; rather the visions had—very possibly—come from one who had no more mind now than an animal in whom memory is a spur to action which the animal does not question or understand. It would explain their clarity; it would explain their repetition.

  And the flashes he had seen of something moving through the jungles, this was Mekare herself.

  “Yes,” Maharet said immediately. “ ‘In the jungles. Walking,’ ” she whispered. “The words of the dying archaeologist, scribbled on a piece of paper and left for me to find when I came. ‘In the jungles. Walking.’ But where?”

  It was Louis who broke the silence.

  “Then the dreams may not be a deliberate message,” he said, his words marked by a slight French accent. “They may simply be the outpouring of a tortured soul.”

  “No. They are a message,” Khayman said. “They are a warning. They are meant for all of us, and for the Mother as well.”

  “But how can you say this?” Gabrielle asked him. “We don’t know what her mind is now, or that she even knows that we are here.”

  “You don’t know the whole story,” Khayman said. “I know it. Maharet will tell it.” He looked to Maharet.

  “I saw her,” Jesse said unobtrusively, her voice tentative as she looked at Maharet. “She’s crossed a great river; she’s coming. I saw her! No, that’s not right. I saw as if I were she.”

  “Yes,” Marius answered. “Through her eyes!”