Prince Lestat (7 page)

Well, it was ruined and overgrown, and some of the rooms had been intentionally knocked down, and there were old tunnels down into the earth which were now half caved in with rocks and dirt, and the jungle had swallowed a wilderness of rusted electrical equipment. All traces of human or vampiric habitation had been obliterated.

So that meant the twins had vanished from here and not even David Talbot knew where they were, David, who had been so fascinated and fearless with the twins, so eager to learn what they had to teach.

And now David was calling to Jesse Reeves and begging for a meeting in Paris.

Red-haired confidante, I must see you, I must discover why it is I cannot find you
.

Now understand I made David a vampire, so I can’t hear his telepathic messages directly, no, but I caught them from other minds as so often happens.

As for Jesse, she was a fledgling vampire, yes, made the night of my travesty of a rock concert in San Francisco some decades before. But she’d been made by her beloved aunt Maharet, a true ancestor of hers, and a vampiric guardian, whom as I’ve explained had some of the oldest and most potent Blood in the world. So Jesse was no ordinary fledgling by any means.

David’s call was going out over and over again, with the intelligence that he’d haunt the Left Bank till Jesse showed up there.

Well, I decided I’d haunt it too until I found David or both of them.

I headed for Paris to a suite I’d maintained for years, in the gorgeous Hôtel Plaza Athénée in the Avenue Montaigne, the closets stocked with a splendid wardrobe (as if that was going to hide the crumbling ruin which I had become), and I prepared to stay in residence and search until David and Jesse appeared. The safe in that suite held all the usual papers, plastic bank cards, and currency I’d need for a comfortable stay in the capital. And I brought with me a cell phone I’d recently had my attorneys obtain for me. I didn’t want to greet Jesse or David as the ragged, dusty, windblown suicidal vagabond. I really was no longer that in spirit, and though I had scant interest in all things material, I felt more at ease in the capital as a member of human society.

It was good to be back in Paris, better than I expected, with all that dizzying life around me, and the magnificent lights of the Champs-Élysées, to be drifting through the galleries of the Louvre again in the early hours of the morning, or haunting the Pompidou or just walking the old streets of the Marais. I spent hours in Sainte-Chappelle, and in the Musée de Cluny loving the old medieval walls of the place, so like the buildings I had known when I was a living boy.

Over and over I heard the misbegotten blood drinkers near at hand, warring with one another, playing cat and mouse in the alleyways, harassing and torturing their mortal victims with a viciousness that astonished me.

But they were a cowardly bunch. And they did not detect my presence. Oh, now and then they knew an old one was passing. But they never got close enough to confirm their suspicions. In fact they fled at the sound of my heartbeat.

Over and over, I got those disconcerting flashes of olden times, my times, when there had been bloody executions in the Place de Grève, and even the most popular thoroughfares had run with mud and filth, and the rats had owned the capital as surely as humankind. Gasoline fumes owned it now.

But mostly, I had to admit I felt good. I even went to the grand Palais Garnier, for a performance of Balanchine’s
Apollo
, and wandered
the magnificent foyer and stairway at my leisure, loving the marble, the columns, the gilt, the soaring ceilings as much as the music. Paris, my capital, Paris, where I’d died and been reborn, was buried beneath the great nineteenth-century monuments I beheld around me, but it was still Paris where I’d suffered the worst defeat of my immortal life. Paris where I might live again every night if I could overcome my own tiresome misery.

I didn’t have long to wait for Jesse and David.

The telepathic cacophony of the fledglings let me know that David had been seen in the streets of the Left Bank, and within hours they were singing songs of Jesse as well.

I was tempted to send out a warning blast to the fledglings to leave the pair entirely alone, but I did not want to break the silence I’d maintained for so long.

It was a chilly night in September, and I soon spotted the pair behind glass, in a noisy crowded brasserie called the Café Cassette in the Rue de Rennes. They had just seen each other as Jesse approached David’s table. I stood concealed in a dark doorway across the way, spying on them, confident they knew someone was out there, but not me.

Meanwhile the fledglings were darting up, photographing them apparently with cell phones that looked like the slab of glass given to me by my attorneys, and then tearing away as fast as they could, without David or Jesse giving them the slightest acknowledgment.

This sent a stab through me, as I knew I’d be photographed too the moment I made my approach. This is the way it is with us now. This was what Benji had been talking about. This was what was happening with the Undead. There was no avoiding it.

I continued to listen and watch.

Now David isn’t a vampire in the body into which he was born. The notorious Body Thief I encountered years ago was largely responsible for that, and when I brought David over into Darkness, as we so quaintly put it, he was a seventy-four-year-old man inhabiting a young, robust, dark-haired, and dark-eyed male body. So that is how he looks and how he will always look, but in my heart of hearts he remains David—my old mortal friend, once the gentle gray-haired Superior General of the Talamasca, and my partner in crime, my ally in my battle against the Body Thief—my forgiving fledgling.

As for Jesse Reeves, Maharet’s near-incomparable blood had made
her a formidable monster. She was a tall, thin woman, with bones like a bird, and rippling light red hair down to her shoulders, whose fierce eyes always regarded the world from an uncommitted remove and a deep isolation. She had an oval face, and looked far too chaste and ethereal to be what anyone would call beautiful. In fact, she had the neuter-gender quality of an angel.

She had come to the meeting in refined safari wear with pressed khaki jacket and pants, and there sat David beaming when he saw her, the British gentleman in gray Donegal tweed with a brown suede vest and elbow patches. He rose to take her in his arms, and at once they fell to confiding in one another in hushed whispers that I could easily hear from my shadowy hiding place.

Well, I could stand this for maybe three minutes. Then the pain was just too much. I almost fled. After all, I’d given up on all this, had I not?

But then I knew I had to see them, had to hold them each in my arms, had to put my heart close to their hearts. So I plunged across the rainy street and into the café and sat down right beside them.

There was a sudden rush of paparazzi blood drinkers from doorways here and there, and they massed beyond the glass to take the inevitable pictures—
It’s Lestat
—. And then they vanished.

David and Jesse had seen me before I was halfway there and David rushed to meet me and threw his arms around me. Jesse hugged both of us. I was lost for a moment to the beating of their hearts, to the subtle scents rising from their hair and skin, and the sheer softness of affection emanating from the firmest of touches.
Mon Dieu, why had I ever thought this was a good idea!

Now came all the tears and recriminations, along with more embraces of course, and the tender fragrant kisses, and Jesse’s lovely soft hair against my cheek again and David’s strict disapproving eyes fixing me mercilessly even though there were blood tears on his face and he had to wipe at them with one of his perfect linen handkerchiefs.

“Okay, we’re getting out of here,” I said, and headed for the door with both of them struggling to keep up with me.

The hovering paparazzi vampires shot away in all directions, except for one intrepid young female with an actual camera flashing away as she danced backwards in front of us.

I had a car waiting to take us to the Plaza Athénée, and we were silent for the short trip, though it was the strangest and most sensuous
experience to be with them, so close, in the backseat of the car, pressing on through the rain with the dim lights blurred in the downpour and the paparazzi following us. I felt pain, being so close to them, and so glad of it. I didn’t want them to know how I felt; indeed, I didn’t want anyone to know how I felt;
I
didn’t want to know how I felt. So I grew hard and quiet and stared out the windows as Paris was rolling by, with all the endless undying energy of a great capital around us.

Halfway home, I threatened the paparazzi streaking on both sides with immolation if they didn’t scatter now. And that did it.

The sumptuous wallpapered living room of my suite was a perfect sanctuary.

We were soon settled under the soft electric lights in the bland but comfortable mélange of eighteenth-century and modern-style sofas and chairs. I loved the comfort of these sturdy furnishings and relished the cabriole legs and bits of brass ormolu and the satin gloss of fruitwood tables and chests.

“Look, I’m not making any excuses for being in exile,” I said at once, speaking my usual rough brash brand of English. “I’m here now and that’s enough and if I want to tell you what I’ve been doing all these years, well, I’ll write a damned book about it.” But I was so glad to be with them. Even yelling at them was a sublime pleasure, instead of merely thinking about them and missing them and longing for them and wondering about them.

“Of course,” David said sincerely, his eyes suddenly rimmed in red. “I’m simply glad to see you, that’s all. The whole world’s glad to know you’re alive. You’ll know that soon enough.”

I was about to say something sharp and unkind when I realized that indeed “the whole world” would know soon enough with all those mavericks out there disseminating their iPhone images and videos. The initial telepathic blast must have been like a meteor crashing into the sea.

“Don’t underestimate your own fame,” I said under my breath.

Well, we’d be gone from here soon enough. Or I’d tough it out and go on enjoying Paris in spite of the little pests. But Jesse was talking now in that cool American-British voice of hers, drawing me back into the room.

“Lestat, it’s never been more important,” Jesse said, “that we come together.” She looked like a nun with a ragged red veil of hair.

“And why is that?” I demanded. “How can we change what’s happening
out there? Wasn’t it always like this, more or less, I mean what has changed really? It must have been this way before.”

“A great deal has changed, apparently,” she replied, but not argumentatively. “But there are things I must confide in you and in David, because I don’t know where else to go or what to do. I was so glad when I realized David was looking for me. I might never have had the courage to come to you on my own—either of you. David, let me speak first, while I have the courage. Then you can explain what it is you want to tell me. It’s about the Talamasca, I understand. But for now the Talamasca is not our greatest concern.”

“What is it then, dearest?” David asked.

“I’m torn,” she said, “because I have no leave to discuss these things, but if I don’t …”

“Trust in me,” David said reassuringly. He took her hand.

She sat on the edge of her chair, small shoulders hunched, her hair tumbled down around her in that veil of waves.

“As you both know,” she said, “Maharet and Mekare have gone into hiding. This began some four years ago with the destruction of our sanctuary in Java. Well, Khayman is still with us, and I come and go as I please. And nothing’s been said to forbid me from coming to you. But something’s wrong, deeply wrong. I’m afraid. I’m afraid that our world may not continue … unless something is done.”

Our world. It was perfectly plain what she meant. Mekare was the host of the spirit that animated us. If Mekare were destroyed, we would all be destroyed as well. All blood drinkers the world over would be destroyed, including that riffraff out there encircling this hotel.

“There were early signs,” Jesse said hesitatingly, “but I didn’t notice them. Only in retrospect did I come to realize what was going on. You both know what the Great Family meant to Maharet. Lestat, you weren’t with us when she told the story, but you knew and you wrote the entire account of this accurately. David, you know all of this as well. My aunt’s human descendants have kept her alive through the millennia. In every generation she reinvented a human persona for herself so that she might care for the Great Family, care for the genealogical records, distribute the grants and the trusts, keep branches and clans in touch with one another. I grew up in this family. Long before I ever dreamed there was any secret surrounding my aunt Maharet, I knew what it was like to be part of it, the beauty of
it, the richness of the heritage. And I knew even then what it meant to her. And I know well enough now that this was the vocation that maintained her sanity when everything else failed.

“Well, sometime before we left the Java compound, she’d succeeded in making the Great Family entirely independent of herself. She confessed to me that the process had taken years. The family’s huge; branches exist in almost every country in the world; she’d spent most of the first decade of the new millennium sitting in law offices and bank offices and building libraries and archives so that the family would survive without her.”

“But all this is quite understandable,” said David. “She’s tired, perhaps. Perhaps she wants a rest. And the world itself has changed so dramatically in the last thirty years, Jesse. What with computers now it is entirely possible to unite and strengthen the Great Family in a way that simply wasn’t possible before.”

“All that’s true, David, but let’s not forget what the Great Family meant to her. I didn’t like to see the weariness. I didn’t like to hear it in her voice. I asked her many times if she would keep watch as she’d always done, even though she no longer had to play an official role.”