The Queen of the Damned (16 page)

“Do you understand what I’m telling you? There have been attacks upon our kind everywhere but there.”

“Where Lestat is.”

“Precisely. But the destroyer moves erratically. It seems it must be near to the thing it would destroy. It may be waiting for the concert in order to finish what it has begun.”

“It can’t hurt you. It would have already—”

The short, derisive laugh again, barely audible. A telepathic laugh?

“Your faith touches me as always, but don’t be my acolyte just now. The thing is not omnipotent. It can’t move with infinite speed. You have to understand the choice I’ve made. We’re going to him because there isn’t any other safe place to go. It has found rogues in far-flung places and burnt them to ashes—”

“And because you want to be with Lestat.”

No answer.

“You know you do. You want to see him. You want to be there if he needs you. If there’s going to be a battle . . . ”

No answer.

“And if Lestat caused it, maybe he can stop it.”

Still Armand didn’t answer. He appeared confused.

“It is simpler than that,” he said finally. “I
have
to go.”

The plane seemed a thing suspended on a spume of sound. Daniel looked drowsily at the ceiling, at the light moving.

To see Lestat at last
. He thought of Lestat’s old house in New Orleans. Of the gold watch he’d recovered from the dusty floor. And now it was back to San Francisco, back to the beginning, back to Lestat. God, he wanted the bourbon. Why wouldn’t Armand give it to him? He was so weak. They’d go to the concert, he’d see Lestat—

But then the sense of dread came again, deepening, the dread which the dreams inspired. “Don’t let me dream any more of them,” he whispered suddenly.

He thought he heard Armand say yes.

Suddenly Armand stood beside the bed. His shadow fell over Daniel. The whale’s belly seemed smaller, no more than the light surrounding Armand.

“Look at me, beloved,” he said.

Darkness. And then the high iron gates opening, and the moon flooding down on the garden.
What is this place?

Oh, Italy, it had to be, with this gentle embracing warm air and a full moon shining down on the great sweep of trees and flowers, and beyond, the Villa of the Mysteries at the very edge of ancient Pompeii.

“But how did we get here!” He turned to Armand, who stood beside him dressed in strange, old-fashioned velvet clothes. For one moment he could do nothing but stare at Armand, at the black velvet tunic he wore and the leggings, and his long curling auburn hair.

“We aren’t really here,” Armand said. “You know we aren’t.” He turned and walked into the garden towards the villa, his heels making the faintest sound on the worn gray stones.

But it was real! Look at the crumbling old brick walls, and the flowers in their long deep beds, and the path itself with Armand’s damp footprints! And the stars overhead, the stars! He turned around and reached up into the lemon tree and broke off a single fragrant leaf.

Armand turned, reached back to take his arm. The smell of freshly turned earth rose from the flower beds.
Ah, I could die here
.

“Yes,” said Armand, “you could. And you will. And you know, I’ve never done it before. I told you but you never believed me. Now Lestat’s told you in his book. I’ve never done it. Do you believe him?”

“Of course I believed you. The vow you made, you explained everything. But Armand, this is my question, to whom did you make this vow?”

Laughter.

Their voices carried over the garden. Such roses and chrysanthemums, how enormous they were. And light poured from the doorways of the Villa of the Mysteries. Was there music playing? Why, the whole ruined place was brilliantly illuminated under the incandescent blue of the night sky.

“So you would have me break my vow. You would have what you think you want. But look well at this garden, because once I do it, you’ll never read my thoughts or see my visions again. A veil of silence will come down.”

“But we’ll be brothers, don’t you see?” Daniel asked.

Armand stood so close to him they were almost kissing. The flowers were crushed against them, huge drowsing yellow dahlias and white gladioli, such lovely drenching perfume. They had stopped beneath a dying tree in which the wisteria grew wild. Its delicate blossoms shivered in clusters, its great twining arms white as bone. And beyond voices poured out of the Villa. Were there people singing?

“But where are we really?” Daniel asked. “Tell me!”

“I told you. It’s just a dream. But if you want a name, let me call it the gateway of life and death. I’ll bring you with me through this gateway. And why? Because I am a coward. And I love you too much to let you go.”

Such joy Daniel felt, such cold and lovely triumph. And so the moment was his, and he was lost no more in the awesome free fall of time. No more one of the teeming millions who would sleep in this dank odoriferous earth, beneath the broken withered flowers, without name or knowledge, all vision lost.

“I promise you nothing. How can I? I’ve told you what lies ahead.”

“I don’t care. I’ll go towards it with you.”

Armand’s eyes were reddened, weary, old. Such delicate clothes these were, hand sewn, dusty, like the clothes of a ghost. Were they what the mind conjured effortlessly when it wanted to be purely itself?

“Don’t cry! It’s not fair,” Daniel said. “This is my rebirth. How can you cry? Don’t you know what this means? Is it possible you never knew?” He looked up suddenly, to catch the whole sweep of this enchanted landscape, the distant Villa, the rolling land above and below. And then he turned his face upwards, and the heavens astonished him. Never had he seen so many stars.

Why, it seemed as if the sky itself went up and up forever with stars so plentiful and bright that the constellations were utterly lost. No pattern. No meaning. Only the gorgeous victory of sheer energy and matter. But then he saw the Pleiades—the constellation beloved of the doomed red-haired
twins in the dream—and he smiled. He saw the twins together on a mountaintop, and they were happy. It made him so glad.

“Say the word, my love,” Armand said. “I’ll do it. We’ll be in hell together after all.”

“But don’t you see,” Daniel said, “all human decisions are made like this. Do you think the mother knows what will happen to the child in her womb? Dear God, we are lost, I tell you. What does it matter if you give it to me and it’s wrong! There is no wrong! There is only desperation, and I would
have it!
I want to live forever with you.”

He opened his eyes. The ceiling of the cabin of the plane, the soft yellow lights reflected in the warm wood-paneled walls, and then around him the garden, the perfume, the sight of the flowers almost breaking loose from their stems.

They stood beneath the dead tree twined full of airy purple wisteria blossoms. And the blossoms stroked his face, the clusters of waxy petals. Something came back to him, something he had known long ago—that in the language of an ancient people the word for flowers was the same as the word for blood. He felt the sudden sharp stab of the teeth in his neck.

His heart was caught suddenly, wrenched in a powerful grip! The pressure was more than he could bear. Yet he could see over Armand’s shoulder and the night was sliding down around him, the stars growing as large as these moist and fragrant blooms. Why, they were rising into the sky!

For a split second he saw the Vampire Lestat, driving, plunging through the night in his long sleek black car. How like a lion Lestat looked with his mane of hair blown back by the wind, his eyes filled with mad humor and high spirits. And then he turned and looked at Daniel, and from his throat came a deep soft laugh.

Louis was there too. Louis was standing in a room on Divisadero Street looking out of the window, waiting, and then he said, “Yes, come, Daniel, if that is what must happen.”

But they didn’t know about the burnt-out coven houses! They didn’t know about the twins! About the cry of danger!

They were all in a crowded room, actually, inside the Villa, and Louis was leaning against the mantel in a frock coat. Everyone was there! Even the twins were there! “Thank God, you’ve come,” Daniel said. He kissed Louis on one cheek and then the other decorously. “Why, my skin is as pale as yours!”

He cried out suddenly as his heart was let go, and the air filled his lungs. The garden again. The grass was all around him. The garden grew up over his head.
Don’t leave me here, not here against the earth
.

“Drink, Daniel.” The priest said the Latin words as he poured the Holy Communion wine into his mouth. The red-haired twins took the sacred plates—the heart, the brain. “This the brain and the heart of my mother I devour with all respect for the spirit of my mother—”

“God, give it to me!” He’d knocked the chalice to the marble floor of the church, so clumsy, but God! The blood!

He sat up, crushing Armand to him, drawing it out of him, draught after draught. They had fallen over together in the soft bank of flowers. Armand lay beside him, and his mouth was open on Armand’s throat, and the blood was an unstoppable fount.

“Come into the Villa of the Mysteries,” said Louis to him. Louis was touching his shoulder. “We’re waiting.” The twins were embracing each other, stroking each other’s long curling red hair.

The kids were screaming outside the auditorium because there were no more tickets. They would camp in the parking lot until tomorrow night.

“Do we have tickets?” he asked. “Armand, the tickets!”

Danger
. Ice. It’s coming from the one trapped beneath the ice!

Something hit him, hard. He was floating.

“Sleep, beloved.”

“I want to go back to the garden, the Villa.” He tried to open his eyes. His belly was hurting. Strangest pain, it seemed so far away.

“You know he’s buried under the ice?”

“Sleep,” Armand said, covering him with the blanket. “And when you wake, you’ll be just like me. Dead.”

S
AN
F
RANCISCO
. He knew he was there before he even opened his eyes. And such a ghastly dream, he was glad to leave it—suffocating, blackness, and riding the rough and terrifying current of the sea! But the dream was fading. A dream without sight, and only the sound of the water, the feel of the water! A dream of unspeakable fear. He’d been a woman in it, helpless, without a tongue to scream.

Let it go away.

Something about the wintry air on his face, a white freshness that he could almost taste. San Francisco, of course. The cold moved over him like a tight garment, yet inside he was deliciously warm.

Immortal. Forever
.

He opened his eyes. Armand had put him here. Through the viscid darkness of the dream, he’d heard Armand telling him to remain. Armand had told him that here he would be safe.

Here.

The French doors stood open all along the far wall. And the room itself, opulent, cluttered, one of those splendid places that Armand so often found, so dearly loved.

Look at the sheer lace panel blown back from the French doors. Look at the white feathers curling and glowing in the Aubusson carpet. He climbed to his feet and went out through the open doors.

A great mesh of branches rose between him and the wet shining sky. Stiff foliage of the Monterey cypress. And down there, through the branches, against a velvet blackness, he saw the great burning arc of the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog poured like thick white smoke past the immense towers. In fits and gusts it tried to swallow the pylons, the cables, then vanished as if the bridge itself with its glittering stream of traffic burnt it away.

Too magnificent, this spectacle—and the deep dark outline of the distant hills beneath their mantle of warm lights. Ah, but to take one tiny detail—the damp rooftops spilling downhill away from him, or the gnarled branches rising in front of him. Like elephant hide, this bark, this living skin.

Immortal . . . forever
.

He ran his hands back through his hair and a gentle tingling passed through him. He could feel the soft imprint of his fingers on his scalp after he had taken his hands away. The wind stung him exquisitely. He remembered something. He reached up to find his fang teeth. Yes, they were beautifully long and sharp.

Someone touched him. He turned so quickly he almost lost his balance. Why, this was all so inconceivably different! He steadied himself, but the sight of Armand made him want to cry. Even in deep shadow, Armand’s dark brown eyes were filled with a vibrant light. And the expression on his face, so loving. He reached out very carefully and touched Armand’s eyelashes. He wanted to touch the tiny fine lines in Armand’s lips. Armand kissed him. He began to tremble. The way it felt, the cool silky mouth, like a kiss of the brain, the electric purity of a thought!

“Come inside, my pupil,” Armand said. “We have less than an hour left.”

“But the others—”

Armand had gone to discover something very important. What was it? Terrible things happening, coven houses burned. Yet nothing at the moment seemed more important than the warmth inside him, and the tingling as he moved his limbs.

“They’re thriving, plotting,” Armand said. Was he speaking out loud? He must have been. But the voice was so clear! “They’re frightened of the
wholesale destruction, but San Francisco isn’t touched. Some say Lestat has done it to drive everyone to him. Others that it’s the work of Marius, or even the twins. Or Those Who Must Be Kept, who strike with infinite power from their shrine.”

The twins! He felt the darkness of the dream again around him, a woman’s body, tongueless, terror, closing him in. Ah, nothing could hurt him now. Not dreams or plots. He was Armand’s child.

“But these things must wait,” Armand said gently. “You must come and do as I tell you. We must finish what was begun.”

“Finish?” It was finished. He was reborn.

Armand brought him in out of the wind. Glint of the brass bed in the darkness, of a porcelain vase alive with gilded dragons. Of the square grand piano with its keys like grinning teeth. Yes, touch it, feel the ivory, the velvet tassels hanging from the lampshade. . . .