Blood Communion (The Vampire Chronicles #13)

by Anne Rice

  I was about to protest when something prevented me from doing it. “All know that you’re under our protection,” I said. “And that you come and go when you please.”

  “Yes, Lestat, and we love you for it. But the balls are becoming a different matter, and this one in particular is really for all of you.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. There will be so many newcomers, more than ever at any one time in the past.”

  “Yes,” she said. “We know we can visit you whenever we like, just as you’re welcome always here.”

  “Something has changed,” I said. “But it has nothing to do with your safety, nothing at all like that.”

  “How would you describe the change?”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “I don’t know. But there’s something in the air now in the palace. There’s something different about it all.”

  “Is this a bad thing or a good thing?” she asked.

  “I think it’s good, but I don’t know.”

  “You do realize you astonished everyone, don’t you?”

  “Well, if I did, luck had a lot to do with it, luck and impetuosity, and my usual devil-may-care attitude. I mean it was the simplest thing, all of it.”

  “That’s what you keep telling others, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s as if you are ashamed of all the adulation.”

  “I’m not ashamed of it,” I said, “but I think anybody could have taken Rhoshamandes down with the same collection of movements. We never stop being human beings no matter how old we are. I didn’t bewitch Rhoshamandes. I just . . .” I didn’t say any more. I rose to go, and I took Kapetria’s right hand and kissed it, and then I kissed her upturned mouth.

  “I’ll always protect you,” I said. “I’ll never be so stupid again as I was about Rhoshamandes. I’ll never let anyone harm you.”

  She smiled at me before slowly rising to take me in her arms.

  “I don’t know why you’re so uneasy,” she said. “It’s all coming together the way you always wanted it.”

  “I? The way I always wanted it?” I said. We walked out of her office and through the garden and towards the gates of the manor-house grounds. It was a lovely evening, and surprisingly mild for December, and the enormous spreading oak trees gave me a deep feeling of peace. Perhaps they made me think of the great oaks of Louisiana, and the long avenues of oaks that often lead to houses such as the house of Fontayne.

  “Yes, it’s all exactly what you wanted,” she said when we had reached the gates.

  “Kapetria, I never dreamed of a Court for us. Never dreamed that my father’s house would become that Court or that I’d be called upon to be the Prince. Believe me, this is not what I always wanted because I could never have imagined it.”

  She was smiling at me, but she said nothing.

  “What on earth do you mean?” I asked.

  “Ah,” she said. “Amel is right. You don’t know yet. But let’s stop with all this. The times are happy times. You go back and I will see you very soon. I’ll be with Fareed in Paris for the next few nights. Perhaps I’ll see you there.”

  And that was the end of our conversation, and it was back to the Château and to the report from Barbara that the work on the crypts had been completed, ceilings replastered, marble tiles replaced over the granite walls. New crypts were being dug in the slopes behind the castle, and soon another building would go up there, an annex of comfortable apartments to supplement the rooms in the Château.

  Barbara walked beside me through the salons leading to my apartment, allowing the newcomers to greet me, and be greeted by me, then politely ushering us steadily along to the safety of my rooms.

  “The chandeliers have been fully repaired and rehung this afternoon,” she reported. “And the parquet floor is entirely refinished. You’d never know that it had been burned.” She wore an artist’s long smock over her usual dress, and her raven hair was loose down her back.

  I marveled at how all of this busy work enlivened her, and how all that I had to give in return was my appreciation of the results. I made a mental note to buy something precious and lovely for Barbara, a string of natural pearls, perhaps, or even a necklace of diamonds to show my gratitude. It saddened me suddenly that I knew so little of her that I couldn’t think of anything more significant than that.

  Before I let her go back to her endless chores, I said again that we must keep sending out the invitation to all the world of the Undead to come to the ball.

  “Do you realize how many are already here?” she responded. “Lestat, if there is a blood drinker anywhere on this Earth who doesn’t know about what is happening, then that one has shut himself off of his own will.”

  She was right.

  The word had gone forth night after night from the Château that all immortals should attend the coming Ball of the Winter Solstice, that no one should stay away out of timidity or fear, that the Court was a place to which all blood drinkers had a right to be received, and that all of the elders of whom we knew would be in attendance when the ballroom again opened its doors.

  It was a feudal pact that we were offering: Come to the Court, acknowledge it and its rules, and you will forever after have its protection, no matter where you go.

  All the rooms of the Château, other than the ballroom, had been open since the night that Marius, Louis, and Gabrielle had returned.

  And Fareed had been busy questioning every newcomer, and recording as much of his or her story as he could. He had a staff of helpers in this endeavor, ranging from those who typed what they heard directly into their laptop computers to those who wrote the stories down in large leather-bound diaries, and still others who recorded the accounts to be transcribed later on.

  Many discoveries were being made.

  It turned out that Baudwin, who had tried to destroy me and destroyed Fontayne’s house in the process, had been the maker of Roland, the unfortunate blood drinker who had imprisoned the Replimoid, Derek, for ten years. And learning of Roland’s destruction at the hands of the elders of our Court, Baudwin had vowed to destroy me for it, though he knew full well I hadn’t been present when the elders destroyed Roland. Why he had not struck at the Replimoids, I didn’t know. A long story lay behind the making of Roland, and Baudwin’s making by Santh, and all this and more went into Fareed’s history, along with the tales Santh told Fareed of his wanderings in the time before the Christ.

  Santh was secretive as to where he had been during the centuries of the Common Era, but of those long-ago nights, he had plenty to say. It was during that time that his fast friendship with Gregory had been forged, and now, when Santh was not talking to Fareed, he was usually at Gregory’s side.

  Meanwhile Louis and Fontayne had become fast friends. Fontayne had been given a spacious apartment in the new southeast tower, and there they read War and Peace together in English, with Fontayne sometimes reading the novel in Russian to Louis, who was picking up the language very fast.

  Gregory had sent funds to America for the rebuilding of Fontayne’s house, for which the nearby towns were extremely grateful, but Fontayne wanted to remain with us and was eager to sell the place as soon as it was restored to the locals, who wanted it as a famous lodging to draw people to their district. Fontayne’s expansive personality invited everyone to like him and accept him. He spent time with Pandora and Bianca, and with Benji and Sybelle.

  Meeting Benji had been a precious moment for him, as he had heard Benji’s radio broadcast for over two years, and was well aware of the role that Benji played in bringing us all together, and establishing the Court.

  As the date of the ball drew near, I had evergreen branches brought in to decorate every mantelpiece and every hearth. Barbara ordered truckloads of holly for more decorations, and evergreen garland which was hung in great festoons from sconce to sconce throughout the hallways and the salons.

  Soon the e
ntire palace, as the newcomers were calling it, smelled of the green forest, and I had a Christmas buffet set out in the high street one evening for all the mortals working on the village and went down to serve the wassail myself. Notker supplied a small string quartet of blood drinkers to play for this event, quiet uncomplaining creatures who easily passed for human as they played the familiar French carols in a way most appealing to human ears.

  Of course, I wore a hooded wool garment for the cold—black velvet lined in white fur, and leather gloves, and pale violet-tinged glasses to shield my “sensitive” eyes from all the flickering torches lining the streets. But it was exquisitely pleasant to be standing amid my mortal workers, passing for human, and talking with them as if nothing divided me from them as we celebrated this special time of year. I had a comfortable sense of how very important it was for these innocent mortals never to guess for a moment the true nature of those who inhabited the Château, and I felt confident that I could preserve their innocence indefinitely. But I kept my eye on Alain, my architect, who had been in residence longer than anyone else now, and I could see what I often saw in him, an awareness that something very mysterious was happening around him, something beyond restoration and reclamation, something that just might be revealed to him eventually and perhaps very soon. (I had hinted to him that I had secrets to share, and would do so when “the time was right.”) He was somewhat isolated and alone at the Christmas gala, and though he chatted with others when they approached him, he spent his time under the sign of the inn, resting against the wall, staring at me, his wool collar pulled up around his ears.

  A bonfire had been built round which the mortals gathered until they were drunk enough not to care about the cold. And a small choir of Notker’s boys sang to the beat of a tambourine the medieval “Gaudete Christus Est Natus,” and the mortals began to clap in time and sing.

  I found myself reflecting on my happiness, my strange sense of satisfaction, so very unusual to me, so very unlike me, and my mind wandered back to Kapetria telling me that I had what I always wanted. I fancied she’d completely misunderstood.

  When had I ever not hated my invisibility as a vampire? When had I ever not cursed my separation from the great stream of human history in which I now accepted that I would never play a part?

  No one knew better than I that secrecy was imperative to the world we had constructed here in these remote mountains, and even Benji had come to accept that the radio broadcasts had to be for the cognoscenti and could no longer go out to all the mortal world.

  I was on the verge of realizing something, something of immense importance—that feeling again, that feeling—and just for a moment, I realized how a great many things all came together to produce something I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge let alone accept . . . when Alain came up to me and slipped his arm around me and said,

  “Monsieur, may I steal you away?”

  “Of course,” I said. And we walked together out of the warm light of the fire and the torches until we had come to the darkened alcove of the church.

  “Monsieur,” he said again, glancing from left to right to make certain we were in private. “I’ve come to a conclusion. I don’t want to leave here when all the work is finished. I think somehow I’ve been ruined for the normal world.”

  “And whoever said that you would ever have to leave here?” I asked.

  “It’s taken for granted, isn’t it?” he replied. “That someday all the restoration will be complete, and you won’t need us anymore. The speed with which all this has come back after the fire, I can see that if anything the time is closer than ever. But I want to stay. I want you to find room for me somewhere, where I can still be useful to you, where I can still do things here and live here and . . .”

  “You’re worrying about nothing,” I said. I put my hands gently to his face and turned his head so that he was looking at me, and I saw deep into his hazel eyes. How very young he was still at forty, with so few lines at the corners of his eyes, and skin so healthy and beautiful here in the shadows. So very perfect.

  “Alain,” I said. “I want you to stay here forever. I promise you. I will never ask you to leave my service.”

  I had taken his breath away.

  “Monsieur, I am honored. Why, I am so honored, yes, yes, I will work for you always. I will find things to do, I will . . .”

  “Doesn’t matter, young one,” I said.

  Tears sprang to his eyes. He looked like a boy to me, rather than a man in his prime. I took the liberty of running my gloved fingers through his thick ashen hair, as if I were an old man, and of course I must have been an old man to him, an old man who had known him as a little boy when his father had brought him to the Château to begin the restoration, though how he accounted for my unchanging appearance I did not know.

  He was aware of this; this I did know.

  I had seen him grow up, go away to university, come home. I had seen him become the man he was now, a widower with a broken heart and one son who lived on the other side of the globe. Such a fine and strong man. Perfectly groomed. Ready. I felt through the thin leather of the glove the smoothness of his square jaw. Perfect. I took his bare hands in mine, his cold hands, red from the cold, and looked at his perfectly groomed nails. What about himself would he change if he could? Nothing, it seemed to me.

  I turned and opened the doors of the church with the Mind Gift. There came the click of the lock and the doors opening, and I heard him gasp in surprise. I took his hand and led him into the darkened church and closed the doors behind us without looking back.

  We stood in the nave under the high Gothic arches. Ahead lay the old altar covered in lace-trimmed white linen with its golden candlesticks and beeswax candles, and banks of flowers fresh for morning Mass.

  I turned to him and took him by the shoulders. “You know what I am, don’t you?” I asked.

  He couldn’t answer. He was staring at me, struggling to see me in the darkness through which I could so easily see him.

  “I believe you are the very being you wrote about, monsieur, in your books. I have always known it. I have seen things, things I never confessed to you. . . .”

  “I know,” I said. “The night that Rose and Viktor were married in this church, you were watching. You broke the curfew and you were watching from the window in the inn. I could have sent you home, but I didn’t. I let you watch.”

  “It’s all true then,” he said. His eyes were gleaming.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the rhythm of his heart. I stripped off my gloves and took his hands again and felt the beat of his heart in his hands, and then I kissed the palm of his right hand.

  “There’s no going back,” I said.

  “I want it!” he cried. “Give it to me.”

  “Some night a very long time from now you’ll come to see that what I am doing is very selfish, but when you do remember this, remember please that I held off for many years. I’ve done many an impulsive and foolish thing in my life, but what I do now, I do with great care.”

  Two hours later, I brought him down from the mountain stream in which he’d cleansed away all the fluids of his physical death and I took him across the drawbridge and through the gates into the lower court of the house. I’d wrapped him in my hooded fur-lined cloak and he wore only this garment as I took him into my apartments, and carefully dressed him from the wealth of shirts and jackets that crowded my closets, and then I led him down into the crypt.

  I saw him shiver as he stared at the coffin, the old-fashioned lacquered coffin in which he would now sleep. I saw him settled in it, and I knelt beside him and kissed his lips. His eyes were already closing.

  “I’ll be here when you wake,” I said. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Chapter 25

  Two nights before the ball, the Great Sevraine sent trunks of gorgeous glittering feminine garments to be freely given to all who
might make use of them; and Barbara and I saw to it that there were rooms filled with jackets, frock coats, tunics and robes, cassocks or soutanes—almost all of which were all made from velvet—for the males.

  Velvet had become the cloth of the Court. I wore only velvet, and always white lace. Marius too wore velvet, and always red in color; and it was the fabric of countless gowns.

  But there were many garments popular among us—of satin damask, and silk, including sherwanis trimmed in jewels. Opera capes, capes lined in fur, boots, and fine shoes, shirts, leather jackets of all styles, dungarees—these were all there to be enjoyed by the vagabond blood drinkers who came to our doors. But one might wear rags to the Winter Solstice Ball if one wished.

  Fareed meantime had revised his estimate of our population to three thousand worldwide, but only about two thousand blood drinkers were known to him in person. And we heard tell of blood drinkers in the Far East who had had no contact with the blood drinkers of the West for thousands of years. Nevertheless we used our telepathic powers to keep sending the invitation.

  As the ball drew near, I found myself dreading it, and I didn’t know why. The house had been filled for nights with blood drinkers eager to make my acquaintance, and I was mightily intrigued by the older blood drinkers who had overcome an earlier reticence to see the Court for themselves. The death of Rhoshamandes had worked a change in their view, and I wasn’t sure why. So it wasn’t a need to be alone that fueled this dread I was feeling. It was something else, something to do with that quickening in me I’d felt the night I brought the remains of Rhoshamandes back to the Château and the roars of the throng had put me in mind of my long-ago rock concert.

  In fact, I was enjoying life in the Château as never before—really enjoying it. Yet there was this dread, this dread perhaps of something inside of me that was changing, something I couldn’t anatomize yet, something that might not be bad at all, but be splendid.