The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (612 page)

But that was fantasy, and weak as it was beautiful.

She broke the silence.

“And so I make another sacrifice,” she said, “or you make it for me, a sacrifice so great I hardly grasp it! Good God—.”

“No,” I answered. “You make the sacrifice, Rowan. You’ve come to the brink but you move back from it. You’ve got to go back, you, yourself.”

Her fingers moved against my back, as though trying to find some human softness in it. Her head nestled against me. Her breath came choked as if in sobs.

“Rowan,” I said. “It’s not the time.”

She looked up at me.

“The time will come,” I said. “I’ll wait and I’ll be there.”

“You mean this?” she asked.

“I mean it,” I said. “You haven’t lost what I have to give, Rowan. It’s just not the time.”

A soft mauve light had come into the sky; the leaves were burning in my eyes. I hated it.

Lifting her gently with me, I sat up and helped her to sit beside me. Bits of grass clung to her, and her hair was prettily disheveled and her eyes glistened in the growing light.

“Of course a thousand things may happen,” I said. “We both know it. But I’ll be watching. I’ll be watching, and waiting. And when the time comes, when you can really draw back from all of it, then I’ll come.”

She looked down, and then up at me again. Her face was pensive and soft. “And will I lose all sight of you now?” she asked. “Will you go away beyond my reach?”

“From time to time, perhaps,” I answered. “But never for very long. I’ll be guarding you, Rowan. You can count on it. And the night will come when we’ll share the Blood. I promise you. The Dark Gift will be yours.”

I rose to my feet. I took her hand and helped her to stand.

“I have to go now, beloved. The light’s my mortal enemy. I wish I could watch the sunrise with you. But I can’t.”

I clasped her to me suddenly, violently, kissing her as hungrily as I ever had. “I love you, Rowan Mayfair,” I said. “I belong to you. I’ll always belong to you. I’ll never never be far away.”

“Good-bye, my love,” she whispered. A faint smile appeared on her face. “You really do love me, don’t you?” she whispered.

“Oh, yes, with my whole heart,” I said.

She turned from me quickly, as though that was the only way to do it, and she walked up the rise of the lawn and to the front drive. I heard the motor of her car, and then I went slowly back around to the rear door of the house, and into my room.

I was so utterly unhappy that I hardly knew what I was doing. And at one point it struck me that what I’d just done was mad. Then it hit me that it just couldn’t have happened. A selfish fiend like me just would not have let her go!

Who said all those noble words!

She’d given me the moment, perhaps the only moment. And I’d tried to be Saint Lestat! I’d tried to be heroic. Dear God, what had I done! Now her wisdom and her strength would carry her far away from me. Age would only enlarge her soul and dwindle for her the glow of my enchantment. I had forfeited her forever. Oh, Lestat, how I do hate thee!

There was plenty enough time for the nightshirt ritual, and as I finished with it, torn with thirst and torn with grief for what I’d just refused and might lose forever, I realized I wasn’t alone.

Ghosts again, I thought.
Mon Dieu.
I looked quite deliberately at the small table.

What a sight.

It was a grown woman, perhaps twenty, twenty-five. Glossy black hair in marcel waves. Flapper dress of layered silk, long string of pearls. Legs crossed, fancy heels.

Stella!

It seemed monstrous, like the little girl I knew stretched and pulled and blown up; cigarette in a holder, poised in her left hand.

“Ducky, don’t be so silly!” she said. “Of course it’s me! Oncle Julien’s so frightened of you now, he won’t come near you. But he just had to send the message: ‘That was superb!’ ”

She vanished before I could throw one of my boots at her. But I wouldn’t have done that anyway.

What did it matter? Let them come and go. After all, this was Blackwood Farm, wasn’t it, and Blackwood Farm has always opened its portals to ghosts.

And now I lay me down to sleep, and the book comes to a close.

Against the deep down pillow, I realized something. Even in grief and loss, I possessed Rowan. She was a presence within me forever. My loneliness would never again be as bitter. Over the years she might drift away from me, she might come to condemn the point of passion that had brought her to my arms. She might be lost to me in some other mundane fashion that would wring tears from me all my nights.

But I’d never really lose her. Because I wouldn’t lose the lesson of love I’d learned through her. And this she had given me as I had tried to give it to her.

And so the morning dew covered the grass on that day at Blackwood Farm like any other, and I dreamt before the sun rose that:

I wanna be a saint, I wanna save souls by the millions, I wanna look like an angel, but I don’t wanna talk like a gangster, I don’t want to do bad things even to bad guys, I wanna be Saint Juan Diego.…

… But you know me, and come sunset, maybe it will be time to hunt the back roads, and those little out-of-the-way beer joints, sure enough, smell the malt and the sawdust, and yeah, right on, dance to the Dixie Chicks on the jukebox, and maybe crush a couple of heavy-duty Evil Doers, guys who are just waiting for me, and when I’m flush with blood, and sick of the smack and roll of the pool balls and that warm light on the green felt, who knows, yeah, who knows just how glorious the firmament with all its breaking clouds and lost little stars will appear as I rise above this Earth and spread out my arms as though there was no want in me for anything warm or good.

Be gone from me, oh mortals who are pure of heart. Be gone from my thoughts, oh souls that dream great dreams. Be gone from me, all hymns of glory. I am the magnet for the damned. At least for a little while. And then my heart cries out, my heart will not be still, my heart will not give up, my heart will not give in—

—the blood that teaches life will not teach lies, and love becomes again my reprimand, my goad, my song.

THE END

Anne Rice
October 5, 2002
New Orleans

For
Stan Rice
1942–2002
—the love of my life.

ALSO BY ANNE RICE

Interview with the Vampire

The Feast of All Saints

Cry to Heaven

The Vampire Lestat

The Queen of the Damned

The Mummy

The Witching Hour

The Tale of the Body Thief

Lasher

Taltos

Memnoch the Devil

Servant of the Bones

Violin

Pandora

The Vampire Armand

Vittorio, The Vampire

Merrick

Blood and Gold

Blackwood Farm

UNDER THE NAME ANNE RAMPLING

Exit to Eden

Belinda

UNDER THE NAME A
.
N
.
ROQUELAURE

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

Beauty’s Punishment

Beauty’s Release