Anne Rice - Vampire Chronicles 2 - The Vampire Lestat (1985)

by The Vampire Lestat(Lit)

  He reflected for a moment.

  "One capture then," he said. "One living specimen in their hands."

  "Even that wouldn't do it," I said. "And how could they ever hold me?"

  But it was too lovely to contemplate-the chase, the intrigue, the possible capture and escape. I loved it.

  He was smiling now in a strange way. Full of disapproval and delight.

  "You are madder than you ever were," he said under his breath. "Madder than when you used to go about New Orleans deliberately scaring people in the old days."

  I laughed and laughed. But then I got quiet. We didn't have that much time before morning. And I could laugh all the way into San Francisco tomorrow night.

  "Louis, I've thought this over from every angle," I said. "It will be harder to start a real war with mortals than you think-"

  "-And you're bound and determined to start it, aren't you? You want everyone, mortal or immortal, to come after you."

  "Why not?" I asked. "Let it begin. And let them try to destroy us the way they have destroyed their other devils. Let them try to wipe us out."

  He was watching me with that old. expression of awe and incredulity that I had seen a thousand times on his face. I was a fool for it, as the expression goes.

  But the sky was paling overhead, the stars drifting steadily away. Only precious moments we had together before the early spring morning.

  "And so you really mean for it to happen," he said earnestly, his tone gentler than before.

  "Louis, I mean for something and everything to happen," I said. "I mean for all that we have been to change! What are we but leeches now-loathsome, secretive, without justification. The old romance is gone. So let us take on a new meaning. I crave the bright lights as I crave blood. I crave the divine visibility. I crave war."

  "The new evil, to use your old words," he said. "And this time it is the twentieth-century evil."

  "Precisely," I said. But again, I thought of the purely mortal impulse, the vain impulse, for worldly fame, acknowledgment. Faint blush of shame. It was all going to be such a pleasure.

  "But why, Lestat?" he asked a little suspiciously. "Why the danger, the risk? After all, you have done it. You have come back. You're stronger than ever. You have the old fire as if it had never been lost, and you know how precious this is, this will simply to go on. Why risk it immediately? Have you forgotten what it was like when we had the world all around us, and no one could hurt us except ourselves?"

  "Is this an offer, Louis? Have you come back to me, as lovers say?"

  His eyes darkened and he looked away from me.

  "I'm not mocking you, Louis," I said.

  "You've come back to me, Lestat," he said evenly, looking at me again. "When I heard the first whispers of you at Dracula's Daughter, I felt something that I thought was gone forever-" He paused.

  But I knew what he was talking about. He had already said it. And I had understood it centuries ago when I felt Armand's despair after the death of the old coven. Excitement, the desire to continue, these things were priceless to us. All the more reason for the rock concert, the continuation, the war itself.

  "Lestat, don't go on the stage tomorrow night," he said. "Let the films and the book do what you want. But protect yourself. Let us come together and let us talk together. Let us have each other in this century the way we never did in the past. And I do mean all of us."

  "Very tempting, beautiful one," I said. "There were times in the last century when I would have given almost anything to hear those words. And we will come together, and we will talk, all of us, and we will have each other. It will be splendid, better than it ever was before. But I am going on the stage. I am going to be Lelio again the way I never was in Paris. I will be the Vampire Lestat for all to see. A symbol, an outcast, a freak of nature-something loved, something despised, all of those things. I tell you I can't give it up. I can't miss it. And quite frankly I am not the least afraid."

  I braced myself for a coldness or a sadness to come over him. And I hated the approaching sun as much as I ever had in the past. He turned his back to it. The illumination was hurting him a little. But his face was as full of warm expression as before.

  "Very well, then," he said. "I would like to go into San Francisco with you. I would like that very much. Will you take me with you?"

  I couldn't immediately answer. Again, the sheer excitement was excruciating, and the love I felt for him was positively humiliating.

  "Of course I'll take you with me," I said.

  We looked at each other for a tense moment. He had to leave now. The morning had come for him.

  "One thing, Louis," I said.

  "Yes?"

  "Those clothes. Impossible. I mean, tomorrow night, as they say in the twentieth century, you will lose that sweater and those pants."

  The morning was too empty after he had gone. I stood still for a while thinking of that message, Danger. I scanned the distant mountains, the never ending fields. Threat, warning-what did it matter? The young ones dial the telephones. The old ones raise their supernatural voices. Was it so strange?

  I could only think of Louis now, that he was with me. And of what it would be like when the others came.

  2

  The vast sprawling parking lots of the San Francisco Cow Palace were overflowing with frenzied mortals as our motorcade pushed through the gates, my musicians in the limousine ahead, Louis in the leatherlined Porsche beside me. Crisp and shining in the black-caped costume of the band, he looked as if he'd stepped out of the pages of his own story, his green eyes passing a little fearfully over the screaming youngsters and motorcycle guards who kept them back and away from us.

  The hall had been sold out for a month; the disappointed fans wanted the music broadcast outside so they could hear it. Beer cans littered the ground. Teenagers sat atop car roofs and on trunks and hoods, radios blaring The Vampire Lestat at appalling volume.

  Alongside my window, our manager ran on foot explaining that we would have the outside video screens and speakers. The San Francisco police had given the go-ahead to prevent a riot.

  I could feel Louis's mounting anxiety. A pack of youngsters broke through the police lines and pressed themselves against his window as the motorcade made its sharp turn and plowed on towards the long ugly tube-shaped hall.

  I was positively enthralled with what was happening. And the recklessness in me was cresting. Again and again the fans surrounded the car before they were swept back, and I was beginning to understand how woefully I had underestimated this entire experience.

  The filmed rock shows I'd watched hadn't prepared me for the crude electricity that was already coursing through me, the way the music was already surging in my head, the way the shame for my mortal vanity was evaporating.

  It was mayhem getting into the hall. Through a crush of guards, we ran into the heavily secured backstage area, Tough Cookie holding tight to me, Alex pushing Larry ahead of him.

  The fans tore at our hair, our capes. I reached back and gathered Louis under my wing and brought him through the doors with us.

  And then in the curtained dressing rooms I heard it for the first time, the bestial sound of the crowd-fifteen thousand souls chanting and screaming under one roof.

  No, I did not have this under control, this fierce glee that made my entire body shudder. When had this ever happened to me before, this near hilarity?

  I pushed up to the front and looked through the peephole into the auditorium. Mortals on both sides of the long oval, up to the very rafters. And in the vast open center, a mob of thousands dancing, caressing, pumping fists into the smoky haze, vying to get close to the stage platform. Hashish, beer, human blood smell swirled on the ventilation currents.

  The engineers were shouting that we were set. Face paint had been retouched, black velvet capes brushed, black ties straightened. No good to keep this crowd waiting a moment longer.

  The word was given to kill the houselights. And a great inhuman cry s
welled in the darkness, rolling up the walls. I could feel it in the floor beneath me. It grew stronger as a grinding electronic buzz announced the connection of "the equipment."

  The vibration went through my temples. A layer of skin was being peeled off. I clasped Louis's arm, gave him a lingering kiss, and then felt him release me.

  Everywhere beyond the curtain people snapped on their little chemical cigarette lighters, until thousands and thousands of tiny flames trembled in the gloom. Rhythmic clapping erupted, died out, the general roar rolling up and down, pierced by random shrieks. My head was teeming.

  And yet I thought of Renaud's so long ago. I positively saw it. But this place was like the Roman Colosseum! And making the tapes, the films-it had been so controlled, so cold. It had given no taste of this.

  The engineer gave the signal, and we shot through the curtain, the mortals fumbling because they couldn't see, as I maneuvered effortlessly over the cables and wires.

  I was at the lip of the stage right over the heads of the swaying, shouting crowd. Alex was at the drums. Tough Cookie had her flat shimmering electric guitar in hand, Larry was at the huge circular keyboard of the synthesizer.

  I turned around and glanced up at the giant video screens which would magnify our images for the scrutiny of every pair of eyes in the house. Then back at the sea of screaming youngsters.

  Waves and waves of noise inundated us from the darkness. I could smell the heat and the blood.

  Then the immense bank of overhead lights went on. Violent beams of silver, blue, red crisscrossed as they caught us, and the screaming reached an unbelievable pitch. The entire hall was on its feet.

  I could feel the light crawling on my white skin, exploding in my yellow hair. I glanced around to see my mortals glorified and frenzied already as they perched amid the endless wires and silver scaffolding.

  The sweat broke out on my forehead as I saw the fists raised everywhere in salute. And scattered all through the hall were youngsters in their Halloween vampire clothes, faces gleaming with artificial blood, some wearing floppy yellow wigs, some with black rings about their eyes to make them all the more innocent and ghastly. Catcalls and hoots and raucous cries rose above the general din.

  No, this was not like making the little films. This was nothing like singing in the air-cooled cork-lined chambers of the studio. This was a human experience made vampiric, as the music itself was vampiric, as the images of the video film were the images of the blood swoon.

  I was shuddering with pure exhilaration and the red-tinged sweat was pouring down my face.

  The spotlights swept the audience, leaving us bathed in a mercuric twilight, and everywhere the light hit, the crowd went into convulsions, redoubling their cries.

  What was it about this sound? It signaled man turned into mob-the crowds surrounding the guillotine, the ancient Romans screaming for Christian blood. And the Keltoi gathered in the grove awaiting Marius, the god. I could see the grove as I had when Marius told the tale; had the torches been any more lurid than these colored beams? Had the horrific wicker giants been larger than these steel ladders that held the banks of speakers and incandescent spotlights on either side of us?

  But there was no violence here; there was no death-only this childish exuberance pouring forth from young mouths and young bodies, an energy focused and contained as naturally as it was cut loose.

  Another wave of hashish from the front ranks. Long-haired leather-clad bikers with spoked leather bracelets clapping their hands above their heads-ghosts of the Keltoi, they seemed, barbarian locks streaming. And from all corners of this long hollow smoky place an uninhibited wash of something that felt like love.

  The lights were flashing on and off so that the movement of the crowd seemed fragmented, to be happening in fits and jerks.

  They were chanting in unison, now the volume swelling, what was it, LESTAT, LESTAT, LESTAT.

  Oh, this is too divine. What mortal could withstand this indulgence, this worship? I clasped the ends of my black cloak, which was the signal. I shook out my hair to its fullest. And these gestures sent a current of renewed screaming to the very back of the hall.

  The lights converged on the stage. I raised my cloak on either side like bat wings.

  The screams fused into a great monolithic roar.

  "I AM THE VAMPIRE LESTAT!" I shouted at the top of my lungs as I stepped way back from the microphone, and the sound was almost visible as it arched over the length of the oval theater, and the voice of the crowd rose even higher, louder, as if to devour the ringing sound.

  "COME ON, LET ME HEAR YOU! YOU LOVE ME!" I shouted suddenly, without deciding to do it. Everywhere people were stomping. They were stomping not only on the concrete floors but on the wooden seats.

  "HOW MANY OF YOU WOULD BE VAMPIRES?"

  The roar became a thunder. Several people were trying to scramble up onto the front of the stage, the bodyguards pulling them off. One of the big dark shaggy-haired bikers was jumping straight up and down, a beer can in each hand.

  The lights went brighter like the glare of an explosion. And there rose from the speakers and equipment behind me the fullthroated engine of a locomotive at stultifying volume as if the train were racing onto the stage.

  Every other sound in the auditorium was swallowed by it. In blaring silence the crowd danced and bobbed before me. Then came the piercing, twanging fury of the electrical guitar. The drums boomed into a marching cadence, and the grinding locomotive sound of the synthesizer crested, then broke into a bubbling caldron of noise in time with the march. It was time to begin the chant in the minor key, its puerile lyrics leaping over the accompaniment:

  I AM THE VAMPIRE LESTAT YOU ARE HERE FOR THE GRAND SABBAT BUT I PITY YOU YOUR LOT

  I grabbed the microphone from the stand and ran to one side of the stage and then to the other, the cape flaring out behind me:

  YOU CAN'T RESIST THE LORDS OF NIGHT THEY HAVE NO MERCY ON YOUR PLIGHT IN YOUR FEAR THEY TAKE DELIGHT

  They were reaching out for my ankles, throwing kisses, girls lifted by their male companions to touch my cape as it swirled over their heads.

  YET IN LOVE, WE WILL TAKE YOU,

  AND IN RAPTURE, WE'LL BREAK YOU AND IN DEATH WE'LL RELEASE YOU

  NO ONE CAN SAY

  YOU WERE NOT WARNED.

  Tough Cookie, strumming furiously, danced up beside me, gyrating wildly, the music peaking in a shrill glissando, drums and cymbals crashing, the bubbling caldron of the synthesizer rising again.

  I felt the music come up into my bones. Not even at the old Roman Sabbat had it taken hold of me like this.

  I pitched myself into the dance, swinging my hips elastically, then pumping them as the two of us moved towards the edge of the stage. We were performing the free and erotic contortions of Punchinello and Harlequin and all the old commedia players improvising now as they had done, the instruments cutting loose from the thin melody, then finding it again, as we urged each other on with our dancing, nothing rehearsed, everything within character, everything utterly new.

  The guards shoved people back roughly as they tried to join us. Yet we danced over the edge of the platform as if taunting them, whipping our hair around our faces, turning round to see ourselves above in an impossible hallucination on the giant screens. The sound traveled up through my body as I turned back to the crowd. It traveled like a steel ball finding one pocket after another in my hips, my shoulders, until I knew I was rising off the floor in a great slow leap, and then descending silently again, the black cape flaring, my mouth open to reveal the fang teeth.

  Euphoria. Deafening applause.

  And everywhere I saw pale mortal throats bared, boys and girls shoving their collars down and stretching their necks. And they were gesturing to me to come and take them, inviting me and begging me, and some of the girls were crying.

  The blood scent was thick as the smoke in the air. Flesh and flesh and flesh. And yet everywhere the canny innocence, the unfathomable trust that it wa
s art, nothing but art! No one would be hurt. It was safe, this splendid hysteria.

  When I screamed, they thought it was the sound system. When I leapt, they thought it was a trick. And why not, when magic was blaring at them from all sides and they could forsake our flesh and blood for the great glowing giants on the screens above us?

  Marius, I wish you could behold this! Gabrielle, where are you?

  The lyrics poured out, sung by the whole band again in unison, Tough Cookie's lovely soprano soaring over the others, before she wrung her head round and round in a circle, her hair flopping down to touch the boards in front of her feet, her guitar jerking lasciviously like a giant phallus, thousands and thousands stamping and clapping in unison.