Prince Lestat (48 page)

“Well, that’s a staggering revelation,” I said. “And how many others like you are roaming around this Earth, may I ask, watching this pageant for pleasure?”

“I’m not watching the pageant for pleasure,” he replied. “And if there are others from our realm who’ve concerned themselves with these events, they haven’t made their presence known to me.”

“Stop, please,” Sevraine implored me. “It will all make more sense to you if you realize this being founded the Talamasca. Now, you know the Talamasca. You know their principles. You know their high-minded goals. You know their dedication. You loved and trusted David Talbot when he was still the Superior General of the Talamasca, a mortal scholar who did all in his power to be your friend. Well, Gremt Stryker Knollys founded the Talamasca, and that should answer all your questions as to his character. I don’t know what other word to use but ‘character.’ You need not doubt Gremt.”

I was speechless.

Of course I’d always known that some supernatural secret burned at the heart of the Talamasca, but what it was I’d never been able to fathom. And to the best of my knowledge, David did not know. And neither did Jesse who had also been a child of the Order long before her aunt Maharet had brought her into the Blood.

“Trust in me,” said Gremt. “I am on your side now. I fear Amel. I have always feared him. I have always dreaded the day he would come into his own.”

I listened patiently but said nothing.

“Tomorrow at sunset, we should all leave here together,” said
Sevraine. “And there I’ll find those as old as I am, as powerful. I’m convinced of it. This conclave will draw them there and under moral constraints which I welcome and respect. Perhaps some have already arrived. And then we’ll be in a position to determine what to do.”

“And meanwhile,” I said softly, “Maharet grapples with this on her own.” I sought to banish all images of that volcano, Pacaya, in Guatemala, where our collective destiny might just end.

Sevraine’s eyes locked on mine. Had she seen it?

Of course I know your fears, but why frighten the others? We do what we must do
.

“Maharet will accept no one’s help,” said Gremt. “I too went to her. It was no use. I knew her when she was a mortal woman. I spoke to her when she was a mortal woman. I was among the spirits who listened to her voice.” His voice remained even but he was becoming emotional, emotional as any genuine human being. “And now after all this time, she does not trust me, or listen to me. She cannot. In her mind she lost the voices of the spirits when she entered the Blood. And any spirit who seeks to incarnate as I’ve done she can’t trust. She can only regard me with abhorrence and fear.” He stopped, as if he couldn’t continue. “I’ve always somehow known that she would turn her back on me when I stood before her, when I confessed to her that it was I, I who’d …” And now he could not say anything more.

His eyes were glazed with tears. He sat back and appeared to take a deep breath, seeking to silently collect himself, and he pressed the fingers of his right hand hard against his own lips.

Why was this so seductive to me, so fascinating? Our emotions came from our minds, did they not, yet softened or hardened our physical bodies. And so his powerful spirit agitated this artfully made physical form in which he resided, with which he had become one. I felt drawn to him. I felt that he was no alien thing at all, but something very like us, a mystery whole unto himself, of course, but very like us.

“I have to go to Maharet,” I said. I started to rise. “I have to stand with her now. You go to the conclave of course, but I’m going to her.”

“Sit down,” said Gabrielle.

I hesitated and then very reluctantly obeyed. I did want to reach the Amazon with hours to spare.

“There are other reasons why you should come with us,” said Gabrielle, in the same firm voice.

“Oh, I know, don’t tell me!” I said angrily. “They want me there. The young ones are clamoring for me to go. They attach some special importance to me. Armand and Louis want me to come. Benji wants me to come. I’ve heard it over and over.”

“Well, all that is true,” said Gabrielle. “And we are a quarrelsome and independent species and we do need any charismatic leader who is willing to take the helm. But there are other reasons.”

She looked at Sevraine.

Sevraine nodded. And Gabrielle went on.

“You have a mortal son there, Lestat, a young man of less than twenty years. His name is Viktor. He knows you are his father. He was born of a mortal woman in Fareed’s laboratory, a woman named Flannery Gilman who is now in the Blood. But your son is not in the Blood.”

Silence.

Not only did I not speak, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t reason. I must have looked like someone who has lost his senses. I stared at Gabrielle and then at Sevraine.

I had no words for what I was feeling. I had no way to comprehend the scope of what was going on not in my mind but in my heart. I could feel the eyes of all present on me, but it didn’t much matter. I looked at them but I didn’t really see them or care about them—Allesandra sitting there staring at me quietly with Bianca beside her, a picture of sympathy and sadness. And Eleni watching me fearfully, with Eugénie all but hiding behind her. And the spirit and the ghost with such emotional expressions. A son. A mortal son. A living breathing son of my flesh. Oh, Fareed, he must have planned it from the start with that enticing bedroom and the warm, sweet-faced Dr. Flannery Gilman so ready with her tender mortal mouth and her hot naked limbs. I’d impregnated her! The possibility had never occurred to me. Not for one second had I thought such a thing possible.

From Sevraine’s mind there came a fully realized image of this boy.

He was looking directly at me in this image, a young man with my square face and somewhat short nose, and my unruly blond hair. Those blue eyes seemed my eyes and yet they weren’t my eyes. They were his own. That was my mouth, all right, sensuous, and a little large for the face, but it had nothing of the cruelty of my mouth. Just a beautiful young boy, in spite of looking like me, a beautiful young
man. The face vanished. And I saw a flash of images now of this young man perhaps as Sevraine had once seen him, striding along an American street, dressed in regular clothes, jeans, a sweater, sneakers, a healthy, glowing young man.

Pain. Unspeakable pain.

It didn’t matter who in this world or any other was staring at me, watching me, seeking to share this moment or merely shuddering as I experienced it. Just didn’t matter. Because in pain like this one is always alone.

“I have another shock for you,” said Sevraine.

I didn’t reply.

“There is a young woman with Viktor whom you also love,” said Sevraine. “Her name is Rose.”

“Rose?” I whispered. “Not my Rose!” This pain was rolling suddenly towards fury. “How in God’s name did they get their hands on my Rose?”

“Let me tell you,” said Sevraine. “Let me explain.” Then slowly in a low voice she told me what had befallen Rose. She told me how my attorneys were trying to reach me, but then I’d been ignoring all “worldly messages of late,” and she recounted the details of an assault on Rose, her blindness, the scarring of her face and throat, and how she had cried out for me over and over in her agony, and how Seth had heard that cry, how Fareed had heard it, and how, on my behalf, they had intervened.

Oh, Death, you are so determined to have my beloved Rose. Death, you cannot stop seeking to take my precious Rose.

“The girl was given just enough of the Blood to cure her blindness,” said Sevraine. “But never enough to take root in her. Just enough of the Blood to heal her esophagus, heal her skin. But never enough to begin the transformation. She’s still fully human and she loves your son, and he loves her.”

I think I murmured something like “This is all Fareed’s doing,” but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t care. I absolutely didn’t care. The rage was gone. Only the pain remained. I kept seeing the image of the boy and I needed no one to give me an image of my beloved Rose, my sweet brave Rose, who’d been so happy when I last saw her, my tender, loving Rose whom I’d given up for her sake, knowing that she was now too old to be near me anymore, too old to be confused by what I was. My Rose. And Viktor.

“These things are now commonly known,” said Sevraine, “because this boy and this girl have been brought by Fareed and Seth to join the others. And you must go there too. Leave Maharet to her own resources. The meeting is what matters. Whatever happens to Maharet, the Voice will still be the challenge. And tomorrow at sunrise, we must go.”

I sat still staring at the surface of the table, thinking of what all this might mean.

A long moment passed and then Eleni said tenderly, “Please, do come with us to join the others. It’s past time for us to be there.”

I glanced at her, at her eager face and that of Eugénie beside her. And my eyes passed over the strangely expressive faces of Raymond Gallant and then Gremt. How infinitely more human they seemed than the rest of us.

“Listen to me,” said Gabrielle impatiently. “You can’t conceivably respond to all these revelations now. No one can. But be assured that this girl, Rose, is on the verge of madness as always happens with those who know too much of us. Viktor on the other hand has always known you were his father, and he grew up with his mother’s love and knows what she is too. So let’s be on our way tomorrow night to resolve this, if nothing else, and then the matter of the Voice.”

I nodded, trying not to show a bitter smile. What a hand they had played! Had it been deliberate? Calculating? Didn’t much matter in the scheme of things. It was what it was.

“You think these matters are more important than the Voice?” I asked. “You think these matters cannot wait a little longer? I don’t know what I think. I can’t think. My mind’s not made up.”

“I think if you return to Maharet,” said Gabrielle, “you’ll be very disappointed at what you find out. And she may very well destroy you.”

“Tell me what you know now!” I said. I was suddenly furious. “Tell me now.”

“What matters is what
all of us
know when we gather,” said Gabrielle. She was as angry as I was. “Not what I suspect, or what fragmentary images I’ve caught or someone else has caught. Don’t you understand? We’re facing a worse crisis than we did last time, can’t you see that? But we have Sevraine, and this ancient one Seth, who’s even older than she is, and who knows who else? We should go to them, not to Maharet.”

“And you knew I had a son and you never told me,” I said suddenly, impulsively, “and you knew what had happened to my Rose.”

“Stop, Lestat, please,” said Sevraine. “You’re hurting my ears. Your mother only found these things out from me and went to fetch you immediately and bring you here as I asked. You have been living in your own well-fortified and solitary world. You gave no hint that any of this concerned you. Now come with us to join the others as we ask.”

“I want to find David and Jesse …,” I said.

“David and Jesse have joined the others,” said Gremt.

“And what do
you
know of Maharet right now!” I demanded. I hit the table with my fist.

“I’m not omniscient,” said Gremt quietly. “I could leave this body and I could travel there—invisible, silent—easily enough. But I’ve forsworn that power. I’ve trained myself to walk and talk and see and hear as a human being. And besides, whatever is happening with Maharet, none of us can change.”

I pushed back the chair and rose to my feet. “I have to be alone now,” I said. “This is all simply too much. I have to wander out there, be alone.… I don’t know what I’ll do. We have several hours more to talk about it. I want to be alone. You should go on to New York, that’s certain. All of you should go. And you should fight this Voice with all your power. As for me, I don’t know.”

Sevraine rose and came around the table and took me by the arm.

“All right then,” she said. “You go wandering if you must. But I have something that might help you with your meditations, something I arranged especially for you.”

She led me out of the room and down a long passage that was covered in soft glittering gold like so much of what I’d already seen. But soon another cruder and unadorned passage led us away from this one and down a long steep rock-cut stairs.

It seemed we were in a labyrinth. And I caught the scent of human beings.

We came finally to a long ramp that led into a small room illuminated only by a couple of thick candles on ledges, and there beyond a wall of iron bars stood a golden-skinned human being staring at me out of the shadows with bitter furious black eyes.

The scent was overpowering, delicious, almost irresistible.

The man began to shake the bars with all his strength and rail
at Sevraine in the most vulgar and coarse French I’d ever heard. He hurled one threat after another at her of confederates who would come to rip her limb from limb and visit every erotic abomination on her that he could conceive.

He swore his “brothers” would never let anyone live who had done harm to him, that she didn’t know what she had done to herself, and so forth and so on, round now in circles, damning her under the worst words ever created in any language to denounce a female being.

I was fascinated. It had been a long time since I’d encountered anyone so totally given over to evil, and so blatant in his fury. The smell of the sea came off his filthy dungarees and his sweat-soaked denim shirt, and I saw scars cut into his face and into his right arm that had hardened into seams of pure white flesh.

Behind me a heavy door was closed.

The creature and I were alone. I saw the key to his cell on a hook to the right of the gate that held him back, and I took it down while he went on raving and cursing, and I turned it slowly in the lock.

He flung the gate back immediately and lunged at me, his hands moving to my throat.

I let him do this, let him hurl his full force at a body that did not yield even by a quarter of an inch. And there he was, trying to press his fingers into my neck and utterly impotent to make the slightest indentation in my skin and staring into my eyes.