Blood Communion

by Anne Rice

  Once again came the praise and acclamation, the clapping, the voices rising in a rumbling roar, but I was deep within myself with the words he’d spoken.

  Yes, our own survival. Our very survival, that is what we faced here. I realized I was nodding, and that I’d been nodding with every word he said. I was too exhausted to grasp the full weight of what was happening. I knew only that I was witnessing something wondrous and I had to open myself to this wondrous thing for this moment to be complete.

  Still smiling at me, this great blond figure drew a short flat sword from under his long dark cloak of leather, and held it up to me as if it were a gladiatorial salute.

  Once more I nodded. Even as I shivered at the horror of it, I nodded. Nodded even though I thought, What must be the agony of Baudwin at this moment, alone, undefended amid a crowd that is screaming for his blood?

  Baudwin convulsed as if he were trying with all his power to send the fire against me, but he was held back, held helpless, surely by Sevraine or Gregory or Seth, or all of them who had the power to do it.

  Grabbing Baudwin by the hair, Gundesanth lifted the sword and sliced through Baudwin’s neck, and then held the head up high for all to see. The crowd was delirious once more, screaming as they had screamed over the remains of Rhoshamandes.

  The eyes of Baudwin stared out of the head as if a thinking brain still suffered behind them. The mouth worked with wet trembling lips. How many horrors such as this had I seen in the last many days? And how they sickened me. How alone I felt suddenly, how isolated and cold, and still numbed from the wind, how small in the warmth of this great room with all of its cheering blood drinkers.

  As Cyril and Thorne held the body, Gundesanth threw this living head to the ground at his feet, and chopped off the arms and then the legs of Baudwin, and then he put his sword back and walked away from the great frenzy of moving bodies surrounding the feast.

  The orchestra began to play another slow and sinister dance like so many that now filled this room night after night, week after week, a dance building and building as the attack continued on Baudwin’s head and limbs, the music swallowing the inevitable sounds of the banquet.

  Gundesanth made his way along the edges of the throng and came up to the throne, and took my right hand and kissed it, eyes flashing at me as his lips pressed my fingers.

  “It was you when I almost fell,” I said. “You caught me.”

  “Yes, it was,” he said in a low and casual voice. He stood beside me on the dais looking down at me. He was a big-boned man, with high strong cheekbones and a large agreeable mouth, and a forehead that ran straight up from dark blond eyebrows to the clean hairline of his shaggy manelike hair. “But you would have waked,” he said. “You didn’t need me. You didn’t need me to bring down Rhoshamandes either. And what a good thing that was because I came too late to help you. You’re too modest when you describe your defeat of him.”

  “Once I’d swallowed his eyes, there was no hope for him,” I said. “And it all happened so very quickly.”

  I was vaguely aware that many around me were listening to me. Cyril was surely listening.

  “Swallowed his eyes!” Gundesanth said, and his own dark green eyes were wide with amused wonder. How white his skin was, and utterly smooth like that of all the ancient ones, but he was such an animated being that the lines of a human face appeared again and again as he spoke, laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, lines at the edges of his mouth. Third to be made by the Mother. Six thousand years.

  “I am so tired my bones have gone to sleep inside me,” I said. “That is all there was to it, taking him by surprise and taking his eyes, and…his blood. Yes, taking his blood. But my heart and head are falling asleep. I can’t say any more and there’s no more to say anyway.”

  He laughed under his breath. If he was as sincere and good-natured as he appeared now, he would be a magnate of the Court.

  “Prince, you need a ring for us to kiss,” he said without a trace of mockery. He reached into his robes and drew out a gold ring with a face carved on it. He held it up to me. It was the head of Medusa on the ring, with her great mass of writhing snakes for hair, scowling at me.

  “Yes, that is a beautiful ring,” I said. I watched as he slipped it onto my right ring finger. I felt him forcing it to fit, and slicing away the bit of gold and alloy which was left over. And going down on one knee, he kissed the ring.

  “Let me be the first to kiss it,” he said. And then he looked up and his eyes fixed on Gregory.

  The two embraced. They fell upon each other. And I heard muffled sobs coming from them, and words in a rush, words in that ancient tongue that Rhoshamandes had spoken as he was dying. That was the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep right where I was on the golden throne given me by Benedict.

  Sometime or other—as the orchestra played and the drums beat and the vampires danced—I was carried down to my crypt, waking once as we went down the steps, amused to find myself slung over Cyril’s mighty shoulder as if I were a little boy. With great care, as if I’d break, he set me down on the marble shelf. I needed no charm to let me sleep now. And no one need guard the door, I thought. For we are all at peace, and when will we grieve for those we lost? And where is Armand, my poor desperate Armand, who had been beating the walls with his fists, my poor Armand? I had not seen him.

  But sleep came and with it dreams, dreams of Rhoshamandes in flames howling and bellowing like a man gone mad. You don’t understand. The bait hah sa rohar.

  And that last plaintive cry for Benedict. Had he seen Benedict as he died? Was there a merciful Heaven that had received them both after their long journey, a journey for which no mortal man is ever equipped, a journey that ends in death no matter how long?

  Gundesanth’s words came back…Hail a new revelation—not from the blind stars or the oracles of madness—but a revelation that comes to us out of our minds and our souls, wed as they are to flesh, living flesh, a revelation rising out of our pain and our thirst and our hearts!

  Chapter 20

  I didn’t wake till the following sunset.

  Immediately, I had a sense of leaving a great web of interrelated dreams, in which things of the greatest importance had been discussed, and plans laid for mighty achievements. But what truly lay before me was the task of rebuilding the village and restoring those portions of the Château damaged by Rhoshamandes’s fatal raids. And I set to work immediately, contacting my architect in Paris, and bringing him and his crew home for the rebuilding.

  Funds had to be transferred for the endeavor, and this was a matter of a few crucial phone calls, and then I made an inspection, with Barbara, of what had been done to our lower crypts. The wall of the ballroom had been restored, but there was finishing to be done both inside and out. Plasterers would have to come by day, and the craftsmen who worked with them, to re-create the frames of the silken panels along the walls and the great designs of the ceiling, and the floors had to be refinished, and the two enormous chandeliers had to be repaired and rehung, and on it went, a list that seemed endless.

  At every turn I was reminded of Marius, and Louis and Gabrielle, and only by the coldest act of will did I avoid falling into a black pit of grief, so black that it would blind me to anything and everything.

  Meanwhile Amel and Kapetria were busy reestablishing their little colony in the English countryside, and I promised to visit them as soon as I was able to do it. Gregory had to assist with this, and he took the legendary “Santh” along with him, who had exacted a promise from everyone to call him Santh rather than Gundesanth, a name he had long associated with infamy. “Gundesanth was a name that struck terror in the runaways of the Queen,” he explained. “Santh is a name to inspire trust.”

  I hated to see him go, as I was eager to talk to him. And desperate to avoid my own pain, I went into Marius’s old library an
d spent the last hours of the night with Pandora and Allesandra and Bianca and Sevraine, who were gathered there. Bianca was obsessed with putting all of Marius’s more recent documents in order, and was behaving as if at any minute she might begin screaming uncontrollably, and Pandora frequently drifted into gazing into the fire saying repeatedly under her breath that “both of them” were gone, meaning Arjun and Marius.

  But I drew all into some semblance of a conversation in which Sevraine said that we must carry on Marius’s work with our constitution and our laws. And Allesandra said the worst pain of the Devil’s Road was seeing others drop by the way and not being able to save them.

  Other work commanded my attention. Avicus and Cyril wanted to explore the newly discovered dungeons, and set to work with a band of helpful fledglings to clean out the accumulated soil of centuries and bring a merciless illumination to barred cells deep within the earth. Indeed, there seemed no end to the dungeon, as they found one deeper floor after another, and passages that led to other passages, and one to a place of escape beyond the nearest cliffs.

  Meanwhile, the house was filling with new visitors—elder blood drinkers of whom we knew nothing, and young ones who’d never dared the journey before—all drawn by the tale of the defeat of Rhoshamandes, all eager to see the Prince who had accomplished it, all fascinated that indeed this new Court with all its promise might actually endure.

  But where was Armand?

  As another night began, I could think of nothing but Armand. I hadn’t seen him since my return. He had not been part of that first greeting; he had not appeared in the Council Chamber; but I knew that he was under the roof. I could feel his presence, and I sought him out.

  Gregory had returned with Santh, and the two came with me, Santh having now transformed himself into a spy among mortals, his hair clipped short and groomed to a luster, his jacket and pants of a thick Irish tweed.

  Armand was in his own apartment in the Château, a string of rooms he’d designed and furnished on his own—with heavy Renaissance Revival chests and tables, and drapery and carpeting of dark red velvet. The walls held high-gloss paintings from the time in which he’d been born—of haloed saints and veiled Virgins, and magnificent Russian icons that twinkled in the dim light.

  Sybelle and Benji were with him when I entered, the two of them sitting on the floor before the fire, Sybelle in a loose dress with her feet bare and Benji in an old worn black Bedouin robe.

  But Armand sat apart, on a huge soft modern couch close to the window, looking through the dim glass at the snow. There was a sketch pad on the small table in front of the couch, and I saw a striking face on the page that appeared to be emerging out of a dark charcoal cloud. It was such a vivid fragment that I wanted to say something about it, but I knew it was not the time.

  As I introduced Santh, Armand responded with a few polite and colorless words. Then his gaze shifted and he looked up at Santh as if he were seeing him for the first time.

  “And out of the deep darkness of Egypt comes yet another great traveler,” Armand whispered. “With tales to tell.”

  “Yes, and very glad to be with you,” said Santh with his usual genial smile. He had been receiving the praise and questions of the fledglings since his return. But now he retreated to the shadows, as if to allow us privacy—as if ears throughout the Château were not listening—and finding an armchair in a far corner, he seated himself, hands casually together in his lap.

  Gregory sat beside Armand on the couch and took the liberty of clasping his left hand.

  Benji drew closer, standing behind Armand, his small brown hands on Armand’s shoulders as Armand continued to watch the falling snow.

  Armand appeared as exhausted as I felt, his clothes dusty and unkempt, his face wan and hungry, and his brown eyes opaque as he stared through the glass. He heard me out when I told him what he already knew of Rhoshamandes’s death, and how Marius’s vision of the constitution and laws would be put into practice. I explained that newcomers were arriving even as we spoke. I think what I wanted to say was that no matter what we’d lost we would persevere, and the Court had not only recovered from Rhosh’s assault but it had taken on a new strength.

  Finally after I had run out of words, Armand spoke, his eyes still on the soundless spectacle of the falling snow.

  “You behaved like a fool,” he said. His words came low, steady, and heated, with little or no emotion. “You should have destroyed that monster in New York at Trinity Gate when we first had him in our power. The others wanted it. Jesse wanted it. I wanted it. And Gregory and Seth wanted it. Only you didn’t want it. Your vanity wouldn’t have it.”

  His voice remained calm, his words coming evenly, as he went on.

  “No, your vanity would forgive and cajole and seduce and win the monster over. And so you see what has happened—Marius, Louis, and Gabrielle are gone from us forever, and for what? For your vanity.” He stopped as though he’d exhausted himself, but he didn’t look at me. He continued to look at the snow.

  Benji was deeply distressed and pleaded with me with his eyes to be patient. Gregory did more or less the same thing.

  “I say nothing in my own defense,” I said.

  “You have nothing to say in your own defense,” Armand replied in the same measured voice, “because there is nothing you could say in your own defense. You’ve never been able to defend any of your great blunders…making a vampire out of a little child, rousing a queen who had closed her heart and soul to nature and history with the fall of Egypt. But you can listen to me now.”

  He turned and looked up at me, his eyes flashing with malice.

  “Listen,” he said in the same dull monotone. “Listen, listen when I tell you that you must wipe out to the very last one those Replimoid creatures whom you’re nurturing in the very heart of an unsuspecting world.”

  He paused. I said nothing. He went on.

  “Wipe them out now,” he said, “off the face of the earth which they could so easily destroy. And wipe out the physical body of that hated spirit Amel that created us and drove us to turn on one another, and nearly took you with him into eternity at Kapetria’s hands. Do these things. Don’t be a fool again. For reasons I don’t understand, the elders of this so-called tribe will not do these things unless you give the order. Well, do it. Issue the order that all of those hideous impostors must die. Do it now for the mortal you once were. Do it now for the mortal world you once loved. Do it now for the mortal destiny you once grieved for. Do it now for the innocent millions out there who have no idea these creatures thrive in their midst, increasing in number with diabolical efficiency. Do it before they have proliferated so that destruction is impossible. Do it for a world that will never know you or thank you, but a world that you can now truly save.”

  Silence. He turned his eyes away from me and back to the snowfall. “Once you wanted recognition from the humans of this planet; once you were so desperate for their recognition and acclaim that you wrote songs and made films of our very own secret history.

  “You flouted your pledge to Marius, all for the love of your mortal brothers and sisters! Desperate for brief moments of mortal fame and recognition, you urged the human race to wipe us out.”

  Once again he looked at me.

  “Where is your love for all those mortals now?” he asked. “Where is your great passion to be a mortal hero?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You think you’ve known regret,” he said. “You’ve known nothing like the regret you will feel once those monsters have abandoned you, you and your pitiable blood drinker acolytes, and run rampant underground.”

  Silence. He sighed as though he had again exhausted himself. He looked at me with eyes full of weariness and disgust and then again through the window. Behind him, Benji was fighting tears.

  Gregory appeared to be deep in thought.

  “I
’ve heard you out,” I said to Armand. “I know where you stand. I’ve known since the beginning that you wanted them annihilated. I cannot do it. I will not.”

  “Fool,” he said, eyes flashing on me again. The blood rushed to his cheeks. “I pray with all my heart that the human race discovers those beasts before they grow in such numbers as to be unstoppable. I pray that something natural and wholesome in this universe in which we live rises to engulf them—.”

  “You won’t do anything—.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I will do nothing. How could I do anything? I won’t ever rise against you, and you have the strongest and the most lethal members of your Court at your disposal. Do you think I want to be given to the mob in your ballroom—torn apart for an evening’s entertainment before my remains are tossed into the fire?”

  “Armand,” I said. “Please.” I dropped down on my knees in front of him, looking up into his face.

  All the emotion he had held back was printed there now. He was in a rage.

  “Is your heart totally turned against me?” I asked. “Do you have no faith in what we seek to build here?”

  “Fool,” he said again. His voice was roughened now by emotion he couldn’t suppress. “I have always loved you,” he said. “I have loved you more than any being in all the world whom I’ve ever loved. I have loved you more than Louis. I have loved you more even than Marius. And you have never given me your love. I would be your most faithful counselor, if you allowed it. But you don’t. Your eyes pass over me as if I don’t exist. And so they always have.”

  I knelt there defeated. I didn’t know where to begin. I didn’t know what to say. I felt such a huge exhaustion, I had no way out of it, no way to find eloquence or reason or the vigor to try to reach him, reach beyond his malice to his soul.