Prince Lestat (50 page)

“I love you all right,” said Rhosh grimly. “But not enough to be destroyed trying to take you into me. And if I did have you inside me, would you feel what I feel?”

“Yes, don’t you see? I am entombed in one who feels nothing and desires nothing, and never drinks, never drinks of the life-giving human blood!”

“When I expose myself to the sun, I know pain as I’m falling into unconsciousness and pain for months after I wake. I do it only because I must to pass for human. Are you willing to know that pain?”

“That is nothing to the pain I know now!” he said. “You’ll wake to golden skin as you know, and so many others will have died, mercifully
died, died! And we will be stronger than ever! Don’t you see? Yes, I will feel what you feel. But once you have the Sacred Core in you,
you will feel what I feel too
.”

The Voice rambled on.

“Did I ever promise the Queen of Egypt that I could support a legion of blood drinkers? Was she mad? Were the First Brood not mad? They knew what I was and who I was and yet they stretched my body and my power beyond all reasonable limits, greedy and wanton, passing the Blood to anyone who would revolt against Akasha, and she made this Queens Blood as if the size of her guard was all that mattered—until I was as a human bleeding from all limbs and all orifices, unable to think, to dream, to know.…”

Rhosh was listening but not much.
You will feel what I feel, too
.

The possibilities were blazing in his mind as he stood at the window looking out over the nighttime city of Manaus.

“What else would you want of me, other than that I sleep under the sun to burn off the riffraff?” The riffraff? More than the riffraff would burn. All the many younger ones would burn—Lestat, his precious Louis, Armand that vicious and notorious tyrant, and of course the little genius Benjamin Mahmoud.

And all of their generations would burn. Vampires would burn who had a thousand years in the Blood, or even two thousand. It had happened before. And Rhoshamandes knew this. It wasn’t legend. He had been burned a shining mahogany brown and suffered agony for months after the King and Queen had been dragged into the Egyptian desert by the wicked elder. Had the elder had the strength to leave the Divine Parents in the sun for three days, Rhoshamandes might have died. And the elder would have died. And who would have come to the rescue of Akasha or Enkil? It would have been the finish there and then. Somewhere in the world Sevraine and Nebamun and countless others must have suffered a similar fate. For those who survived and grew stronger, many perished driven to further immolation by the pain of their existence. He remembered all that. Yes, he remembered.

But no one knew how many years in the Blood were needed to survive such a holocaust. Oh, well, maybe the great doctors Fareed and Seth knew. Maybe they had made studies, calculations, based on interviews with blood drinkers, analysis of accounts in the Vampire Chronicles. Maybe they had made projections. Maybe they could
transfuse blood from the ancients to the young ones with glistening plastic sacks and shining plastic tubes. Maybe they had a store of ancient blood in their vaults, drawn out of the veins of the great Seth.

“Oh, yes, they are very clever,” said the Voice, ignoring Rhosh’s earlier question and addressing his rambling thoughts. “But they have no love for me. They are treacherous. They speak of ‘the tribe’ as does Benji Mahmoud as if I were not the tribe!” He roared in anguish. “As if I, I, Amel, were not the tribe!”

“So you don’t want to fall into their hands,” said Rhosh.

“No, never! Never!” The Voice sounded frantic. “Think what they might do to me! Can you imagine?”

“And what could they possibly do?” asked Rhosh.

“Put me in a tank of the Blood, my Blood, Blood I made, put me in a tank of it where I would be blind and deaf and mute and trapped in even deeper darkness than I am in now.”

“Nonsense. Somebody would have to feed and sustain such a tank. They’d never do such a dangerous thing. And you are not a separate element now. Even I know that. You are wed to the brain of Mekare, wed to her heart to pump blood to her brain. If they were to simulate such an arrangement, as I said, someone and indeed more than one would have to maintain it and sustain it. That will never happen to you.”

The Voice was clearly mollified.

He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I must be quiet now but you must come to me. She comes. She’s hunted and she is full of despair. She dreams of plunging herself and Mekare and me into a lake of fire! She mourns her lost fledglings. She has driven away those who love her.”

Rhoshamandes shook his head. Under his breath he murmured a desperate negation.

“Listen to me!” pleaded the Voice. “She needs but one word of encouragement from some despairing soul like herself, I tell you, and she will take Mekare in her arms and go at once to this volcano called Pacaya. Do you know where that is?”

“Pacaya,” whispered Rhosh. “Yes, I know where it is.”

“Well, it is where our story will end in fire if you do not come! It could happen this very night, I tell you!”

“You can’t read her mind, can you? You’re entombed in her maker. You can’t …”

“I do not read her mind from Mekare’s mind, you fool,” said the Voice. “I go stealthily into her mind as I go into yours! She cannot lock me out! But oh, if I were to seek to speak to her how I would terrify her, how I would drive her over the edge!”

Pacaya, an active volcano in Guatemala. Rhosh was gasping for breath. He was trembling.

“You must come now,” said the Voice. “Khayman is lost somewhere in the north where I sent him to destroy. He is a ruin of himself, I tell you. He was never crafted for eternity as you were. The mere sight of him goads her to despair. He is a broken instrument. Come to me now. Do you know what a machete is? There are machetes all over in this place. Machetes. You know how to use a machete? Free me from this body! And if you do not, I will sing my songs to someone else!”

It was gone. He could feel that it was gone.

Where had it gone? Off to turn some desperate fearful blood drinker somewhere against another? Or to tempt Nebamun wherever he might be, or even Sevraine?

And what precisely would happen if the Sacred Core was transferred to such a being? What if the very worst happened and somehow that impulsive Lestat de Lioncourt got control of it in his young body? Perish the thought.

And Pacaya, what if she took her twin with her, rose into the air, and sought out that inferno? Oh, what agony would descend on each and every member of the tribe throughout the world as unquenchable heat and flame sought to burn the host of the Sacred Core?

Benedict had fallen asleep on the bed. Barefoot in freshly laundered jeans and a white dress shirt open at collar and cuffs, he lay there dreaming.

There was something about the sight of him sleeping so trustingly that touched Rhoshamandes. Of all the blood drinkers Rhosh had ever made or known, this one’s body and face were a true reflection of his soul no matter how much time passed. This one knew how to love.

No wonder it had been Benedict who brought the memoirs of the Vampire Chronicles to Rhosh and insisted he read them. No wonder Benedict had so cherished Louis de Pointe du Lac’s suffering and Lestat’s wild rebellion. “They understand,” he’d told Rhosh. “We cannot live without love. Doesn’t matter how old, how strong, we are,
what we possess. We cannot exist without love. It’s absolutely impossible. And they know it, young as they are, they know.”

Rhosh sat down gently beside him, and touched his back. The cotton shirt was soft, clean against his smooth skin. His neck and his soft curly brown hair were silky. Rhosh bent to kiss his cheek.

“Wake up now, Ganymede,” he said. “Your maker needs you.” He ran his hand over the boy’s hips, and his slender powerful thighs, feeling the iron muscles under the starched denim. Had there ever been a more nearly perfect body in the Blood? Well, perhaps, in Allesandra, before she’d become a crone of her own making, twisted, leering, mad, a ragged monster of the Children of Satan. But this was surely the next-best body, wasn’t it?

Benedict woke with a start staring blindly forward.

“The Voice,” he murmured against the pillow. “The Voice is saying come, isn’t it?”

“And we will, but you are to stay some twenty feet behind me. You come when I call to you.”

“Twenty feet against monsters like this.”

Rhosh stood and pulled Benedict to his feet.

“Well, fifty feet then. Stay out of sight, but near enough to hear my slightest command and come instantly.”

How many times had Rhosh instructed Benedict in how to use the Fire Gift, how to muster it and send it against any blood drinker who ever tried to use it against him, how to fight off the power of another older killer, how to slam back with full force against gifts that seemed on the surface to be overwhelming? How many times had he demonstrated how he might do things with his mind which he’d thought impossible, opening doors, shattering them, blowing them off their hinges?

“No one knows the full measure of anyone else’s powers,” he’d said countless times over the centuries. “You survive the attacks of others when you fight! Fight and flee. Do you hear me?”

But Benedict was no natural warrior. In that short span of his mortal life on Earth, he’d been a prayerful scholar, only tempted by the sensuality of the natural world all around him to abandon his Christian god. He’d been a being made for monastery libraries and royal courts, a lover of gorgeously illustrated manuscripts and books, of flutes and drums and lutes playing, of blended voices in song, of the love of men and women in silken beds, and in perfumed gardens.

Not a warrior, no, never. He’d only sinned against his Christian god because he couldn’t see the harm in loving passion. And the satisfaction of his rampant desires had always been easy, harmonious, pleasant.

A deep chill passed through Rhosh. Perhaps he had done the very wrong thing bringing Benedict here, but was he not infinitely more vulnerable miles away, even in the crypt, to some trickery on the part of the Voice?

Well, there was no time to go over a plan now, not when Maharet was returning to her fortress and when she might, with those preternatural ears, hear what she could not hear telepathically.

“Put on your shoes, we’re going now.”

Finally, they stood like dark shadows in the open window. Not a single mortal eye saw them ascend.

And only moments passed before they came down silently into the jungles surrounding Maharet’s compound.

“Ah, you are here and not a moment too soon,” said the Voice, fearlessly inside Rhosh’s head. “And she is here. She comes and she leaves the gates open behind her. Hurry before she presses all her magical electric buttons and closes me off in this prison!”

He stepped inside the great wire-mesh enclosure, and walked quietly towards the lighted archway.

“The machetes. Do you see them?” said the Voice. “They are against the wall. They are sharp.”

Rhosh was tempted to say, If you don’t shut up, you’re going to drive me mad, but he didn’t. He clenched his teeth, lifted his chin slightly.

And yes, he did see the long wooden-handled machete lying on the wooden bench among the pots of orchids. He did see the blade glinting in the light from the arch, though it was caked with mud.

“She dreams of Pacaya,” said the Voice. “She sees its boiling crater. She sees white steam rising to the dark sky. She sees lava flowing down the mountain in fiery fingers of light. She thinks nothing can live in that inferno, not her, not her sister—.”

Oh, if he could only shut out the Voice.

“And I dare not seek to deter her for I am what she fears above all things!”

There was a dark shape to his left. He saw it just as he picked up the machete and watched the caked mud fall off the blade.

Slowly he raised his eyes to see the figure of one of the twins staring at him—one, but which one?

He was petrified, holding the machete in his hand. Those blue eyes were fixed on him in a kind of dreamy indifference, the light from the doorway slicing out the edge of the smooth expressionless face. The eyes moved on away from him indifferently.

“That is Mekare,” the Voice whispered. “That is my prison. Move on! Move on as if you know where you are going! Do you know where you are going?”

A soft brokenhearted crying reached his ears. It was coming from the lighted room beyond the archway.

He made his way forward on the soft earthen path, clutching the machete in his right hand, fingers massaging the rough wooden handle. Strong, heavy handle. Monstrous blade. Two feet in length perhaps. A powerful cleaver. He could smell the steel blade, smell the dried mud, and smell the moist earth all around him.

He reached the doorway.

Maharet sat in a dark brown rattan chair with her face in her hands, her body clothed in a long robe of dark rose cotton. Long sleeves covered her arms, and her fingers as white as her face were dripping with the delicate blood of her tears, her long copper hair tossed behind her, covering her bent back. She was barefoot.

She cried softly.

“Khayman,” she said softly in an agonized voice. And slowly she sat back turning to face him wearily.

With a start she saw him there in the doorway.

She didn’t know who he was. She couldn’t pick his name suddenly from all the years, all the many years.

“Kill her,” said the Voice. “Get rid of her now.”

“Benedict!” he said loudly, distinctly, most certainly loud enough for his companion to hear, and at once he heard the boy coming through the garden.

“What is it you want of me?” asked the woman facing him. The blood made two fine strokes down her cheeks like the painted tears of a French clown with a china face. Her eyes were rimmed in red, her eyebrows gleaming golden.

“Ah, so it’s brought you here, has it?” she said. She rose to her feet in one swift movement, the chair thrown back and over behind her.

Some five feet stood between them.

Behind him, Benedict stood, waiting. He could hear Benedict’s breath.

“Don’t speak to her!” cried the Voice inside his head. “Don’t believe what she says to you.”