Prince Lestat (40 page)

Later additions to this castle, Rhosh had designed in the High Gothic style for his own pleasure, and his heart was warmed when those mortals who occasionally stumbled on this place thought it was a triumph.

How he loathed being disturbed here by all this. How much other immortals must loathe it, those who’d made sanctuaries like this so they could have some peace.

He’d never modernized the place. It was as cold and severe as it had been five hundred years ago, a castle appearing to grow out of rocky cliffs on the western coast of a steep, inaccessible, and untamable island.

He’d managed to install generators in the gulch below the cliff some twenty years ago, and tanks for petrol, and to deepen and
improve the eastern harbor for his sleek modern boats, but electric power here was reserved entirely for the televisions and the computers, never for lighting or warmth. And those computers had brought him the first word of all this madness, not telepathic voices that he had long ago learned to entirely shut out. No, Benji Mahmoud had told him the times were changing.

How he wanted to keep things as they had always been.

There was no one on this island but the two of them, and down in the gorge the old mortal caretaker and his wife and his poor feebleminded daughter. The old mortal caretaker saw to the petrol tanks and the generators and the cleaning of these rooms by day, and he was paid well for it. He saw to Rhosh’s cabin cruiser in the harbor, that big powerful Wally Stealth Cruiser which Rhosh could effortlessly sail on his own. They were forty miles from the nearest land. That’s how Rhoshamandes wanted to keep it.

True, once the great Maharet had come calling. That had been in the nineteenth century and she had appeared on his battlements, a lone figure attired in heavy wool robes waiting courteously for an invitation to enter.

They had played chess, talked. And she had gone her way. First Brood and Queens Blood had no longer meant the slightest thing to either of them. But he’d been left with the impression of insurmountable power and wisdom, yes, wisdom, though he did not like to admit it. And he had admired her in spite of his wariness and the unpleasant realization that her gifts vastly exceeded his own.

Another time the formidable Sevraine had been here too, though he had only caught a glimpse of her in the oak forest that covered the lower southern coast of the little island. Yes, it had been Sevraine, he’d been sure of it.

He’d gone down into the valley and in search of her. But she’d vanished, and to the best of his knowledge she’d never returned. She’d been splendidly attired, in gold-trimmed robes of rich flashing color. And that indeed was how she was always described by those who insisted they’d seen her—the magnificent Sevraine.

Yet another time when he’d been piloting his boat alone through the violent seas off the Irish coast, he’d seen her high on a bluff looking out at him. He’d wanted to drop anchor and go to her. He’d sent her the message. But telepathy was dim or nonexistant among those made in the first thousand years, and it seemed to have become even
dimmer now. He had caught no greeting from her. Indeed she’d disappeared. After that he’d searched Ireland for her but never turned up the slightest indication of her presence or a habitation or a coven or a clan. And it was known that the great Sevraine had always about her a number of women, a female clan.

Not a single other blood drinker had ever come here. So this was and always had been the realm of Rhoshamandes. And he envied no one, not the erudite and philosophical Marius, nor the other gentle well bred vampires of the Coven of the Articulate.

Yes, he wanted to know those new poetic vampire writers, yes, he had to admit it, wanted to know Louis and Lestat, yes, but he could live with that longing for centuries. And in a few centuries they might be gone from the Earth.

What was an immortal like Lestat, who had less than three hundred years in the Blood, after all? One could hardly call such a being a true immortal. Too many died at that age and beyond. So yes, he could wait.

And as for Armand, he would despise Armand till the end of his days. He would like very much to destroy him. Again, on that he could wait, but he had been thinking of late the time for vengeance on Armand might be drawing closer. If Rhoshamandes had still been in France when Armand arrived there to lead the Children of Satan, he would have destroyed Armand. But by that time, Rhosh was long gone. Still, he should have done it, should have ravaged that Paris coven. He’d always thought some other ancient one would do it, and he’d been wrong. Lestat had destroyed it and not by force but with new ways.

Ah, but this is my kingdom, he thought now, and how can all this be coming to my shores?

Never had he hunted in Edinburgh or Dublin or London that he hadn’t wanted to come home immediately to this zone of quiet and changelessness.

Now this thing, this Voice, was threatening his peace and his independence.

And he’d been talking to the Voice a long time, something which he had no intention of confiding in Benedict. He was furious with the Voice right now, furious that Benedict had been in danger.

“And what’s to stop it from coming here?” asked Benedict. “What’s to stop it from finding me here the way it’s been finding all those others who’re trying to escape? It burnt some as old as me.”

“Not quite as old as you,” said Rhoshamandes, “and not with your blood. There was an old one there, obviously, in thrall to the Voice. It was probably blasting you when the walls went up. If others were burning around you, it had you in its sights. It was in that building and it had you. But it couldn’t kill you.”

“It said horrid ghastly things to me when it spoke to me,” said Benedict. He had recovered himself a little and was sitting back again. “It tried to confuse me, to make me think I was having these thoughts and somehow was its servant, that I wanted to serve it.”

“Go, clean all the blood from your face,” said Rhoshamandes.

“Rhosh, why do you always worry about such things?” Benedict pleaded. “I’m suffering, I’m in agony here, and all you care about is blood on my face and clothes.”

“All right,” said Rhoshamandes. He sighed. “So tell me. What is it you want me to know?”

“That thing, that thing when he was talking to me, I mean before the fire …”

“Several nights back.”

“Yes, then. He told me to burn the others, that he could not come to power until they were wiped out, that he wanted me to kill them for him, and that he expected me to be ready to rush into the flames myself for him.”

“Yes,” said Rhoshamandes, laughing softly, “he’s whispered a lot of that rhapsodic nonsense to me too. He has an exalted idea of himself.” He laughed again. “He didn’t begin at such a pitch, however. At first it was simply, ‘You must kill them. Look at what they’re doing to you.’ ”

Again, he did not let on that he was in a rage, a rage now that the Voice had sought after all their many intimate conversations to enlist his Benedict. Did the Voice see through Rhosh’s eyes? Did it hear through his ears? Or could it only pitch its tent inside Rhosh’s brain and talk and talk and talk?

“Yes, but then he started all that about his coming into his own. What does he mean?” Benedict brought his fist down on the old oak desk. He’d screwed up his face like an angry cherub. “Who is he?”

“Stop that,” said Rhoshamandes. “Be still now and let me think.”

He sat down again by the stone hearth. The flames were burning brightly there, fanned by the cool wind that now and then gusted through the glassless windows.

Rhosh had been speaking to the Voice for weeks. But the Voice had been silent now for five nights. Could it be the Voice could not
attend to two tasks at one time, that the Voice, if it were to possess some wretched revenant and drive it to burn, could not be speaking politely to Rhosh at the same time or even on the same evening?

Five nights ago the Voice had said, “You of all understand me. You of all understand power, the desire for power, what is at the heart of the desire for power.”

“Which is what?” Rhosh had asked the Voice.

“Simple,” the Voice had replied. “Those who desire power want to be immune to the power of others.”

Then five nights of silence. Mayhem throughout the world. Benji Mahmoud broadcasting all night long from the infamous Trinity Gate house in New York, with recordings of the show looping during his daylight hours so that those in other parts of the globe could hear them.

“Maybe it’s time I discovered what’s going on here for myself,” Rhosh said. “Now listen to me. I want you to go belowstairs and stay there. If some benighted emissary of the thing should crash-land on our wintry little paradise, you’ll be safe from it down there. Stay there till I return. This is the same precaution being taken by others the world over. Belowground you are safe. And if this thing talks to you, this Voice, well, try to learn more about it.”

He opened the heavy iron-braced oak doors to the bedroom. He had to change his clothes for the journey, another terrific annoyance.

But Benedict came after him.

The fire was low in the bedchamber and glowing beautifully. Heavy red velvet draperies covered the open windows, and the stone floors here were covered with old oak boards and layered with silk and wool Persian carpets.

Rhosh stepped out of his robe and flung it to the side, but then Benedict rushed into his arms and held him fast. He buried his face in Rhosh’s wool shirt and Rhosh looked to the ceiling thinking of all this blood smearing onto his own clothes.

But what did it matter?

He embraced Benedict tightly and moved him towards the bed.

It was an old coffered bed from the court of the last Henry. A splendid thing with rich knobby posts, and they loved lying together in it.

He stripped off Benedict’s jacket, and then his shirt and his sweater, and brought him down on the dark embroidered covers. He
lay beside him, fingers tightening on the pink nipples on Benedict’s chest, his lips grazing Benedict’s throat, and then he pressed Benedict’s head against his own throat and said, “Drink” under his breath.

At once those razor-sharp teeth broke through and he felt the mighty hungry pull on his heart as the blood flowed out of him towards the heart beating against him. A gusher of images opened. He saw the burning house in London, saw that hideous wraithlike thing, saw what Benedict must have seen but never registered, that thing falling to its knees, the rafters coming down on it, an arm cracked loose and flung away in the fire, black fingers curling. He heard the skull pop.

The images dissolved in the pleasure that he was feeling, the deep dark throbbing pleasure he reveled in as the blood was drawn out of him with greater and greater speed. It was as if a hand had ahold of his heart and was squeezing his heart and the pleasure washed out in waves from his heart, passing through all his limbs.

Finally he turned and pulled Benedict off and sank his teeth into his neck. Benedict cried out. Rhosh ground him against the velvet cover, drawing the blood with all his strength, deliberately sending spasm after spasm through Benedict. He caught the images again. He caught the sight of London below as Benedict had taken to the skies. He caught the roar and the scent of the wind. The blood was so thick, so pungent! The fact was every single blood drinker on this Earth had a distinct and unique flavor of blood. And Benedict’s was luscious. It took all his determination to let go, to run his tongue over his lips and lie back on the pillow and stare up at the worm-eaten oak ceiling of the bed.

The crackling of the fire seemed hugely loud in the empty chamber. How red was the chamber, from the fire, from the dark red draperies. Such lurid and beautiful and soothing light. My world.

“You go down now to the cellar, as I told you,” Rhosh said. He rose up on his elbow and kissed Benedict roughly. “You hear me? You listening to me?”

“Yes, yes, and yes.” Benedict moaned. He was obviously weak all over from the pleasure of it, but Rhoshamandes had taken only what he’d given, passing the zinging red ribbon of his own blood through the younger one’s veins before whipping it back into himself.

He climbed off the bed and, before the open armoire, pulled on a heavy cashmere sweater and woolen pants, then wool socks and
boots. He chose his long Russian coat for this journey, the black velvet military coat of czarist days with the black fox collar. He pulled a watch cap down over his hair. And then took from the bottom drawer of the armoire all the papers and currency he might need, and put these securely into his inside pockets. Where were his gloves? He put them on, loving the way his long fingers looked in the sleek black kid leather.

“But where are you going?” asked Benedict. He sat up, mussed, rosy cheeked, and pretty. “Tell me.”

“Stop being so anxious,” said Rhoshamandes. “I’m going west into the night. I’m going to find the twins and get to the bottom of this. I know this Voice has to be coming from one of them.”

“But Mekare’s mindless and Maharet would never do such things. Everybody knows that. Even Benji says that.”

“Yes, Benji, Benji, the great prophet of the blood drinkers.”

“But it’s true.”

“Downstairs, Benedict, before I drag you there myself. I have to be off now.”

It was a fine retreat, that cellar suite of rooms, hardly a dungeon what with its thick animal skins and abundant oil lamps, and of course the oak fire laid ready to be lighted. The television and computers down there were comparable to those up here, and a slender air shaft actually brought a steady bit of fresh ocean breeze in from a tiny opening in the rocky cliff.

As Benedict went out, Rhosh went to the eastern wall, lifted the heavy stag-hunt French tapestry that covered it, and pushed back the door to his secret office, one of those doors weighted so that no mortal alone could move it.

Familiar smell of beeswax, parchment, old leather, and ink. Hmmm. He always stopped a moment to savor it.

With the power of his mind, he quickly ignited a bank of candles on iron candelabra spikes.

The rock-cut chamber was lined with books to the ceiling, and on one wall hung a huge map of the world painted by Rhosh himself on canvas to feature the cities that he most loved in correct relationship to one another.