by Anne Rice
“But his face only brightened with an irresistible smile. He seemed on the verge of laughing at me, and then his shoulders began to move with this laughter. ‘But Louis,’ he said softly. ‘This is the very spirit of your age. Don’t you see that? Everyone else feels as you feel. Your fall from grace and faith has been the fall of a century.’
“I was so stunned by this, that for a long time I sat there staring into the fire. It had all but consumed the wood and was a wasteland of smoldering ash, a gray and red landscape that would have collapsed at the touch of the poker. Yet it was very warm, and still gave off powerful light. I saw my life in complete perspective.
“ ‘And the vampires of the Theatre…’ I asked softly.
“ ‘They reflect the age in cynicism which cannot comprehend the death of possibilities, fatuous sophisticated indulgence in the parody of the miraculous, decadence whose last refuge is self-ridicule, a mannered helplessness. You saw them; you’ve known them all your life. You reflect your age differently. You reflect its broken heart.’
“ ‘This is unhappiness. Unhappiness you don’t begin to understand.’
“ ‘I don’t doubt it. Tell me what you feel now, what makes you unhappy. Tell me why for a period of seven days you haven’t come to me, though you were burning to come. Tell me what holds you still to Claudia and the other woman.’
“I shook my head. ‘You don’t know what you ask. You see, it was immensely difficult for me to perform the act of making Madeleine into a vampire. I broke a promise to myself that I would never do this, that my own loneliness would never drive me to do it. I don’t see our life as powers and gifts. I see it as a curse. I haven’t the courage to die. But to make another vampire! To bring this suffering on another, and to condemn to death all those men and women whom that vampire must subsequently kill! I broke a grave promise. And in so doing…’
“ ‘But if it’s any consolation to you… surely you realize I had a hand in it.’
“ ‘That I did it to be free of Claudia, to be free to come to you… yes, I realize that. But the ultimate responsibility lies with me!’ I said.
“ ‘No. I mean, directly. I made you do it! I was near you the night you did it. I exerted my strongest power to persuade you to do it. Didn’t you know this?’
“ ‘No.’ I bowed my head.
“ ‘I would have made this woman a vampire,’ he said softly. ‘But I thought it best you have a hand in it. Otherwise you would not give Claudia up. You must know you wanted it…’
“ ‘I loathe what I did!’ I said.
“ ‘Then loathe me, not yourself.’
“ ‘No. You don’t understand. You nearly destroyed the thing you value in me when this happened! I resisted you with all my power when I didn’t even know it was your force which was working on me. Something nearly died in me! Passion nearly died in me! I was all but destroyed when Madeleine was created!’
“ ‘But that thing is no longer dead, that passion, that humanity, whatever you wish to name it. If it were not alive there wouldn’t be tears in your eyes now. There wouldn’t be rage in your voice,’ he said.
“For the moment, I couldn’t answer. I only nodded. Then I struggled to speak again. ‘You must never force me to do something against my will! You must never exert such power…’ I stammered.
“ ‘No,’ he said at once. ‘I must not. My power stops somewhere inside you, at some threshold. There I am powerless, however… this creation of Madeleine is done. You are free.’
“ ‘And you are satisfied,’ I said, gaining control of myself. ‘I don’t mean to be harsh. You have me. I love you. But I’m mystified. You’re satisfied?’
“ ‘How could I not be?’ he asked. ‘I am satisfied, of course.’
“I stood up and went to the window. The last embers were dying. The light came from the gray sky. I heard Armand follow me to the window ledge. I could feel him beside me now, my eyes growing more and more accustomed to the luminosity of the sky, so that now I could see his profile and his eye on the falling rain. The sound of the rain was everywhere and different: flowing in the gutter along the roof, tapping the shingles, falling softly through the shimmering layers of tree branches, splattering on the sloped stone sill in front of my hands. A soft intermingling of sounds that drenched and colored all of the night.
“ ‘Do you forgive me… for forcing you with the woman?’ he asked.
“ ‘You don’t need my forgiveness.’
“ ‘You need it,’ he said. ‘Therefore, I need it.’ His face was as always utterly calm.
“ ‘Will she care for Claudia? Will she endure?’ I asked.
“ ‘She is perfect. Mad; but for these days that is perfect. She will care for Claudia. She has never lived a moment of life alone; it is natural to her that she be devoted to her companions. She need not have particular reasons for loving Claudia. Yet, in addition to her needs, she does have particular reasons. Claudia’s beautiful surface, Claudia’s quiet, Claudia’s dominance and control. They are perfect together. But I think… that as soon as possible they should leave Paris.’
“ ‘Why?’
“ ‘You know why. Because Santiago and the other vampires watch them with suspicion. All the vampires have sees Madeleine. They fear her because she knows about them and they don’t know her. They don’t let others alone who know about them.’
“ ‘And the boy, Denis? What do you plan to do with him?’
“ ‘He’s dead,’ he answered.
“I was astonished. Both at his words and his calm. ‘You killed him?’ I gasped.
“He nodded. And said nothing. But his large, dark eyes seemed entranced with me, with the emotion, the shock I didn’t try to conceal. His soft, subtle smile seemed to draw me close to him; his hand closed over mine on the wet window sill and I felt my body turning to face him, drawing nearer to him, as though I were being moved not by myself but by him. ‘It was best,’ he conceded to me gently. And then said, ‘We must go now…’ And he glanced at the street below.
“ ‘Armand,’ I said. ‘I can’t…’
“ ‘Louis, come after me,’ he whispered. And then on the ledge, he stopped. ‘Even if you were to fall on the cobblestones there,’ he said, ‘you would only be hurt for a while. You would heal so rapidly and so perfectly that in days you would show no sign of it, your bones healing as your skin heals; so let this knowledge free you to do what you can so easily do already. Climb down, now.’
“ ‘What can kill me?’ I asked.
“Again he stopped. ‘The destruction of your remains,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know this? Fire, dismemberment… the heat of the sun. Nothing else. You can be scarred, yes; but you are resilient. You are immortal.’
“I was looking down through the quiet silver rain into darkness. Then a light flickered beneath the shifting tree limbs, and the pale beams of the light made the street appear. Wet cobblestones, the iron hook of the carriage-house bell, the vines clinging to the top off the wall. The huge black hulk of a carriage brushed the vines, and then the light grew weak, the street went from yellow to silver and vanished altogether, as if the dark trees had swallowed it up. Or, rather, as if it had all been subtracted from the dark. I felt dizzy. I felt the building move. Armand was seated on the window sill looking down at me.
“ ‘Louis, come with me tonight,’ he whispered suddenly, with an urgent inflection.
“ ‘No,’ I said gently. ‘It’s too soon. I can’t leave them yet.’
“I watched him turn away and look at the dark sky. He appeared to sigh, but I didn’t hear it. I felt his hand close on mine on the window sill. ‘Very well…’ he said.
“ ‘A little more time…’ I said. And he nodded and patted my hand as if to say it was all right. Then he swung his legs over and disappeared. For only a moment I hesitated, mocked by the pounding of my heart. But then I climbed over the sill and commenced to hurry after him, never daring to look down.”
“It was very near dawn when I put my key into
the lock at the hotel. The gas light flared along the walls. And Madeleine, her needle and thread in her hands, had fallen asleep by the grate. Claudia stood still, looking at me from among the ferns at the window, in shadow. She had her hairbrush in her hands. Her hair was gleaming.
“I stood there absorbing some shock, as if all the sensual pleasures and confusions of these rooms were passing over me like waves and my body were being permeated with these things, so different from the spell of Armand and the tower room where we’d been. There was something comforting here, and it was disturbing. I was looking for my chair. I was sitting in it with my hands on my temples. And then I felt Claudia near me, and I felt her lips against my forehead.
“ ‘You’ve been with Armand,’ she said. ‘You want to go with him.’
“I looked up at her. How soft and beautiful her face was, and, suddenly, so much mine. I felt no compunction in yielding to my urge to touch her cheeks, to lightly touch her eyelids — familiarities, liberties I hadn’t taken with her since the night of our quarrel. ‘I’ll see you again; not here, in other places. Always I’ll know where you are!’ I said.
“She put her arms around my neck. She held me tight, and I closed my eyes and buried my face in her hair. I was covering her neck with my kisses. I had hold of her round, firm little arms. I was kissing them, kissing the soft indentation of the flesh in the crooks of her arms, her wrists, her open palms. I felt her fingers stroking my hair, my face. ‘Whatever you wish,’ she vowed. ‘Whatever you wish.’
“ ‘Are you happy? Do you have what you want?’ I begged her.
“ ‘Yes, Louis.’ She held me against her dress, her fingers clasping the back of my neck. ‘I have all that I want. But do you truly know what you want?’ She was lifting my face so I had to look into her eyes. ‘It’s you I fear for, you who might be making the mistake. Why don’t you leave Paris with us!’ she said suddenly. ‘We have the world, come with us!’
“ ‘No.’ I drew back from her. ‘You want it to as it was with Lestat. It can’t be that way again, ever. It won’t be.’
“ ‘It will be something new and different with Madeleine. I don’t ask for that again. It was I who put an end to that,’ she said. ‘But do you truly understand what you are choosing in Armand?’
“I turned away from her. There was something stubborn and mysterious in her dislike of him, in her failure to understand him. She would say again that he wished her death, which I did not believe. She didn’t realize what I realized: he could not want her death, because I didn’t want it. But how could I explain this to her without sounding pompous and blind in my love of him. ‘It’s meant to be. It’s almost that sort of direction,’ I said, as if it were just coming clear to me under the pressure of her doubts. ‘He alone can give me the strength to be what I am. I can’t continue to live divided and consumed with misery. Either I go with him, or I die,’ I said. ‘And it’s something else, which is irrational and unexplainable and which satisfies only me…’
“ ‘Which is?’ she asked.
“ ‘That I love him,’ I said.
“ ‘No doubt you do,’ she mused. ‘But then, you could love even me.’
“ ‘Claudia, Claudia.’ I held her close to me, and felt her weight on my knee. She drew up close to my chest.
“ ‘I only hope that when you have need of me, you can find me…’ she whispered. ‘That I can get back to you… I’ve hurt you so often, I’ve caused you so much pain.’ Her words trailed off. She was resting still against me. I felt her weight, thinking, in a little while, I won’t have her anymore. I want now simply to hold her. There has always been such pleasure in that simple thing. Her weight against me, this hand resting against my neck.
“It seemed a lamp died somewhere. That from the cool, damp air that much light was suddenly, soundlessly subtracted. I was sitting on the verge of a dream. Had I been mortal I would have been content to sleep there. And in that drowsy, comfortable state I had a strange, habitual mortal feeling, that the sun would wake me gently later and I would have that rich, habitual vision of the ferns in the sunshine and the sunshine in the droplets of rain. I indulged that feeling. I half closed my eyes.
“Often afterwards I tried to remember those moments. Tried over and over to recall just what it was in those rooms as we rested there, that began to disturb me, should have disturbed me. How, being off my guard, I was somehow insensible to the subtle changes which must have been taking place there. Long after, bruised and robbed and embittered beyond my wildest dreams, I sifted through those moments, those drowsy quiet early-hour moments when the clock ticked almost imperceptibly on the mantelpiece, and the sky grew paler and paler; and all I could remember — despite the desperation with which I lengthened and fixed that time, in which I held out my hands to stop the clock — all I could remember was the soft changing of light.
“On guard, I would never have let it pass. Deluded with larger concerns, I made no note of it. A lamp gone out, a candle extinguished by the shiver of its own hot pool of wax. My eyes half shut, I had the sense then of impending darkness, of being shut up in darkness.
“And then I opened my eyes, not thinking of lamps or candles. And it was too late. I remember standing upright, Claudia’s hand slipping on my arm, and the vision of a host of black-dressed men and women moving through the rooms, their garments seeming to garner light from every gilt edge or lacquered surface, seeming to drain all light away. I shouted out against them, shouted for Madeleine, saw her wake with a start, terrified fledgling, clinging to the arm of the couch, then down on her knees as they reached out for her. There was Santiago and Celeste coming towards us, and behind them, Estelle and others whose names I didn’t know filling the mirrors and crowding together to make walls of shifting, menacing shadow. I was shouting to Claudia to run, having pulled back the door. I was shoving her through it and then was stretched across it, kicking out at Santiago as he came.
“That weak defensive position I’d held against him in the Latin Quarter was nothing compared to my strength now. I was too flawed perhaps to ever fight with conviction for my own protection. But the instinct to protect Madeleine and Claudia was overpowering. I remember kicking Santiago backwards and then striking out at that powerful, beautiful Celeste, who sought to get by me. Claudia’s feet sounded on the distant marble stairway. Celeste was reeling, clawing at me, catching hold of me and scratching my face so the blood ran down over my collar. I could see it blazing in the corner of my eye. I was on Santiago now, turning with him, aware of the awful strength of the arms that held me, the hands that sought to get a hold on my throat. ‘Fight them, Madeleine,’ I was shouting to her. But all I could hear was her sobbing. Then I saw her in the whirl, a fixed, frightened thing, surrounded by other vampires. They were laughing that hollow vampire laughter which is like tinsel or silverbells. Santiago was clutching at his face. My teeth had drawn blood there. I struck at his chest, at his head, the pain searing through my arm, something enclosing my chest like two arms, which I shook off, hearing the crash of broken glass behind me. But something else, someone else had hold of my arm with two arms and was pulling me with tenacious strength.
“I don’t remember weakening. I don’t remember any turning point when anyone’s strength overcame my own. I remember simply being outnumbered. Hopelessly, by sheer numbers and persistence, I was stilled, surrounded, and forced out of the rooms. In a press of vampires, I was being forced along the passageway, and then I was falling down the steps, free for a moment before the narrow back doors of the hotel, only to be surrounded again and held tight. I could see Celeste’s face very near me and, if I could have, I would have wounded her with my teeth. I was bleeding badly, and one of my wrists was held so tightly that there was no feeling in that hand. Madeleine was next to me sobbing still. And all of us were pressed into a carnage. Over and over I was struck, and still I did not lose consciousness. I remember clinging tenaciously to consciousness, feeling these blows on the back of my head, feeling the back of my
head wet with blood that trickled down my neck as I lay on the carriage floor. I was thinking only, I can feel the carnage moving; I am alive; I am conscious.
“And as soon as we were dragged into the Theatre des Vampires, I was crying out for Armand.
“I was let go, only to stagger on the cellar steps, the horde of them behind me and in front of me, pushing me with menacing hands. At one point I got hold of Celeste, and she screamed and someone struck me from behind.
“And then I saw Lestat — the blow that was more crippling than any blow. Lestat, standing there in the center of the ballroom, erect, his gray eyes sharp and focused, his mouth lengthening in a cunning smile. Impeccably dressed he was, as always, and as splendid in his rich black cloak and fine linen. But those scars still scored every inch of his white flesh. And how they distorted the taut, handsome face, the fine, hard threads cutting the delicate skin above his lip, the lids of his eyes, the smooth rise of his forehead. And the eyes, they burned with a silent rage that seemed infused with vanity, an awful relentless vanity that said, ‘See what I am.’
“ ‘This is the one?’ said Santiago, thrusting me forward.
“But Lestat turned sharply to him and said in a harsh low voice, ‘I told you I wanted Claudia, the child! She was the one!’ And now I saw his head moving involuntarily with his outburst, and his hand reaching out as if for the arm of a chair only to close as he drew himself up again, eyes to me.
“ ‘Lestat,’ I began, seeing now the few straws left to me. ‘You are alive! You have your life! Tell them how you treated us…’
“ ‘No,’ he shook his head furiously. ‘You come back to me, Louis,’ he said.
“For a moment I could not believe my ears. Some saner, more desperate part of me said, Reason with him, even as the sinister laughter erupted from my lips. ‘Are you mad!’
“ ‘I’ll give you back your life!’ he said, his eyelids quivering with the stress of his words, his chest heaving, that hand going out again and closing impotently in the dark. ‘You promised me,’ he said to Santiago, ‘I could take him back with me to New Orleans.’ And then, as he looked from one to the other of them as they surrounded us, his breath became frantic, and he burst out, ‘Claudia, where is she? She’s the one who did it to me, I told you!’
