The Queen of the Damned (59 page)

What did Khayman see when he looked at her now, as if he understood her. Did he see his daughter in Jesse?

“Yes,” Khayman said. “My daughter. And don’t be afraid. Mekare will come. Mekare will fulfill the curse. And the Great Family will go on.”

Maharet sighed. “When I knew the Mother had risen, I did not guess what she might do. To strike down her children, to annihilate the evil that had come out of her, and out of Khayman and me and all of us who out of loneliness have shared this power—that I could not really question! What right have we to live? What right have we to be immortal? We are accidents; we are horrors. And though I want my life, greedily, I want it as fiercely as ever I wanted it—I cannot say that it is wrong that she has slain so many—”

“She’ll slay more!” Eric said desperately.

“But it is the Great Family now which falls under her shadow,” Maharet said. “It is their world! And she would make it her own. Unless . . . ”

“Mekare will come,” Khayman said. The simplest smile animated his face. “Mekare will fulfill the curse. I made Mekare what she is, so that she would do it. It is our curse now.”

Maharet smiled, but it was vastly different, her expression. It was sad, indulgent, and curiously cold. “Ah, that you believe in such symmetry, Khayman.”

“And we’ll die, all of us!” Eric said.

“There has to be a way to kill her,” Gabrielle said coldly, “without killing us. We have to think on this, to be ready, to have some sort of plan.”

“You cannot change the prophecy,” Khayman whispered.

“Khayman, if we have learned anything,” Marius said, “it is that there is no destiny. And if there is no destiny then there is no prophecy. Mekare comes here to do what she vowed to do; it may be all she knows now or all she can do, but that does not mean that Akasha can’t defend herself against Mekare. Don’t you think the Mother knows Mekare has risen? Don’t you think the Mother has seen and heard her children’s dreams?”

“Ah, but prophecies have a way of fulfilling themselves,” Khayman said. “That’s the magic of it. We all understood it in ancient times. The power of charms is the power of the will; you might say that we were all great geniuses of psychology in those dark days, that we could be slain by
the power of another’s designs. And the dreams, Marius, the dreams are but part of a great design.”

“Don’t talk of it as if it were already done,” Maharet said. “We have another tool. We can use reason. This creature speaks now, does she not? She understands what is spoken to her. Perhaps she can be diverted—”

“Oh, you are mad, truly mad!” Eric said. “You are going to speak to this monster that roamed the world incinerating her offspring!” He was becoming more frightened by the minute. “What does this thing know of reason, that inflames ignorant women to rise against their men? This thing knows slaughter and death and violence, that is all it has ever known, as your story makes plain. We don’t change, Maharet. How many times have you told me. We move ever closer to the perfection of what we were meant to be.”

“None of us wants to die, Eric,” Maharet said patiently. But something suddenly distracted her.

At the same moment, Khayman too felt it. Jesse studied both of them, attempting to understand what she was seeing. Then she realized that Marius had undergone a subtle change as well. Eric was petrified. Mael, to Jesse’s surprise, was staring fixedly at her.

They were hearing some sound. It was the way they moved their eyes that revealed it; people listen with their eyes; their eyes dance as they absorb the sound and try to locate its source.

Suddenly Eric said: “The young ones should go to the cellar immediately.”

“That’s no use,” Gabrielle said. “Besides, I want to be here.” She couldn’t hear the sound, but she was trying to hear it.

Eric turned on Maharet. “Are you going to let her destroy us, one by one?”

Maharet didn’t answer. She turned her head very slowly and looked towards the landing.

Then Jesse finally heard the sound herself. Certainly human ears couldn’t hear it; it was like the auditory equivalent of tension without vibration, coursing through her as it did through every particle of substance in the room. It was inundating and disorienting, and though she saw that Maharet was speaking to Khayman and that Khayman was answering, she couldn’t hear what they were saying. Foolishly, she’d put her hands to her ears. Dimly, she saw that Daniel had done the same thing, but they both knew it did no good at all.

The sound seemed suddenly to suspend all time; to suspend momentum. Jesse was losing her balance; she backed up against the wall; she stared at the map across from her, as if she wanted it somehow to sustain her. She
stared at the soft flow of the lights streaming out of Asia Minor and to the north and to the south.

Some dim, inaudible commotion filled the room. The sound had died away, yet the air rang with a deafening silence.

In a soundless dream, it seemed, she saw the figure of the Vampire Lestat appear in the door; she saw him rush into Gabrielle’s arms; she saw Louis move towards him and then embrace him. And then she saw the Vampire Lestat look at her—and she caught the flashing image of the funeral feast, the twins, the body on the altar. He didn’t know what it meant! He didn’t know.

It shocked her, the realization. The moment on the stage came back to her, when he had obviously struggled to recognize some fleeting image, as they had drawn apart.

Then as the others drew him away now, with embraces and kisses again—and even Armand had come to him with his arms out—he gave her the faintest little smile. “Jesse,” he said.

He stared at the others, at Marius, at the cold and wary faces. And how white his skin was, how utterly white, yet the warmth, the exuberance, the almost childlike excitement—it was exactly as it had been before.

S
HE sat at the end of the table, waiting for them; so still, placid, the magenta gown giving her skin a deep carnal glow in the light of the fire.

The edge of her face was gilded by the glow of the flames, and the dark window glass caught her vividly in a flawless mirror, as if the reflection were the real thing, floating out there in the transparent night.

Frightened. Frightened for them and for me. And strangely, for her. It was like a chill, the presentiment. For her. The one who might destroy all that I had ever loved.

At the door, I turned and kissed Gabrielle again. I felt her body collapse against me for an instant; then her attention locked on Akasha. I felt the faint tremor in her hands as she touched my face. I looked at Louis, my seemingly fragile Louis with his seemingly invincible composure; and at Armand, the urchin with the angel’s face. Finally those you love are simply . . . those you love.

Marius was frigid with anger as he entered the room; nothing could disguise this. He glared at me—I, the one who had slain those poor helpless mortals and left them strewn down the mountain. He knew, did he not? And all the snow in the world couldn’t cover it up.
I need you, Marius. We need you
.

His mind was veiled; all their minds were veiled. Could they keep their secrets from her?

As they filed into the room, I went to her right hand because she wanted me to. And because that’s where I knew I ought to be. I gestured for Gabrielle and Louis to sit opposite, close, where I could see them. And the look on Louis’s face, so resigned, yet sorrowful, struck my heart.

The red-haired woman, the ancient one called Maharet, sat at the opposite end of the table, the end nearest the door. Marius and Armand were on her right. And on her left was the young red-haired one, Jesse. Maharet looked absolutely passive, collected, as if nothing could alarm her.
But it was rather easy to see why. Akasha couldn’t hurt this creature; or the other very old one, Khayman, who sat down now to my right.

The one called Eric was terrified, it was obvious. Only reluctantly did he sit at the table at all. Mael was afraid too, but it made him furious. He glowered at Akasha, as if he cared nothing about hiding his disposition.

And Pandora, beautiful, brown-eyed Pandora—she looked truly uncaring as she took her place beside Marius. She didn’t even look at Akasha. She looked out through the glass walls, her eyes moving slowly, lovingly, as she saw the forest, the layers and layers of dim forest, with their dark streaks of redwood bark and prickling green.

The other one who didn’t care was Daniel. This one I’d seen at the concert too. I hadn’t guessed that Armand had been with him! Hadn’t picked up the faintest indication that Armand had been there. And to think, whatever we might have said to each other, it was lost now forever. But then that couldn’t be, could it? We would have our time together, Armand and I; all of us. Daniel knew it, pretty Daniel, the reporter with his little tape recorder who with Louis in a room on Divisadero Street had somehow started all of this! That’s why he looked so serenely at Akasha; that’s why he explored it moment by moment.

I looked at the black-haired Santino—a rather regal being, who was appraising me in a calculating fashion. He wasn’t afraid either. But he cared desperately about what happened here. When he looked at Akasha he was awed by her beauty; it touched some deep wound in him. Old faith flared for a moment, faith that had meant more to him than survival, and faith that had been bitterly burnt away.

No time to understand them all, to evaluate the links which connected them, to ask the meaning of that strange image—the two red-haired women and the body of the mother, which I saw again in a glancing flash when I looked at Jesse.

I was wondering if they could scan my mind and find in it all the things I was struggling to conceal; the things I unwittingly concealed from myself.

Gabrielle’s face was unreadable now. Her eyes had grown small and gray, as if shutting out all light and color; she looked from me to Akasha and back again, as if trying to figure something out.

And a sudden terror crept over me. Maybe it had been there all the time. They would never yield either. Something inveterate would prevent it, just as it had with me. And some fatal resolution would come before we left this room.

For a moment I was paralyzed. I reached out suddenly and took Akasha’s hand. I felt her fingers close delicately around mine.

“Be quiet, my prince,” she said, unobtrusively and kindly. “What you feel in this room is death, but it is the death of beliefs and strictures. Nothing more.” She looked at Maharet. “The death of dreams, perhaps,” she said, “which should have died a long time ago.”

Maharet looked as lifeless and passive as a living thing can look. Her violet eyes were weary, bloodshot. And suddenly I realized why. They were human eyes. They were dying in her head. Her blood was infusing them over and over again with life but it wasn’t lasting. Too many of the tiny nerves in her own body were dead.

I saw the dream vision again. The twins, the body before them. What was the connection?

“It is nothing,” Akasha whispered. “Something long forgotten; for there are no answers in history now. We have transcended history. History is built on errors; we will begin with truth.”

Marius spoke up at once:

“Is there nothing that can persuade you to stop?” His tone was infinitely more, subdued than I’d expected. He sat forward, hands folded, in the attitude of one striving to be reasonable. “What can we say? We want you to cease the apparitions. We want you not to intervene.”

Akasha’s fingers tightened on mine. The red-haired woman was staring at me now with her bloodshot violet eyes.

“Akasha, I beg you,” Marius said. “Stop this rebellion. Don’t appear again to mortals; don’t give any further commands.”

Akasha laughed softly. “And why not, Marius? Because it so upsets your precious world, the world you’ve been watching for two thousand years, the way you Romans once watched life and death in the arena, as if such things were entertainment or theater, as if it did not matter—the literal fact of suffering and death—as long as you were enthralled?”

“I see what you mean to do,” Marius said. “Akasha, you do not have the right.”

“Marius, your student here has given me those old arguments,” she answered. Her tone was now as subdued and eloquent of patience as his. “But more significantly, I have given them a thousand times to myself. How long do you think I have listened to the prayers of the world, pondering a way to terminate the endless cycle of human violence? It is time now for you to listen to what I have to say.”

“We are to play a role in this?” Santino asked. “Or to be destroyed as the others have been destroyed?” His manner was impulsive rather than arrogant.

And for the first time the red-haired woman evinced a flicker of emotion, her weary eyes fixing on him immediately, her mouth tense.

“You will be my angels,” Akasha answered tenderly as she looked at him. “You will be my gods. If you do not choose to follow me, I’ll destroy you. As for the old ones, the old ones whom I cannot so easily dispatch”—she glanced at Khayman and Maharet again—“if they turn against me, they shall be as devils opposing me, and all humanity shall hunt them down, and they shall through their opposition serve the scheme quite well. But what you had before—a world to roam in stealth—you shall never have again.”

It seemed Eric was losing his silent battle with fear. He moved as if he meant to rise and leave the room.

“Patience,” Maharet said, glancing at him. She looked back at Akasha.

Akasha smiled.

“How is it possible,” Maharet asked in a low voice, “to break a cycle of violence through more wanton violence? You are destroying the males of the human species. What can possibly be the outcome of such a brutal act?”

“You know the outcome as well as I do,” Akasha said. “It’s too simple and too elegant to be misunderstood. It has been unimaginable
until now
. All those centuries I sat upon my throne in Marius’s shrine; I dreamed of an earth that was a garden, a world where beings lived without the torment that I could hear and feel. I dreamed of people achieving this peace without tyranny. And then the utter simplicity of it struck me; it was like dawn coming. The people who can realize such a dream are women; but only if all the men—or very nearly all the men—are removed.

“In prior ages, such a thing would not have been workable. But now it is easy; there is a vast technology which can reinforce it. After the initial purgation, the sex of babies can be selected; the unwanted unborn can be mercifully aborted as so many of both sexes are now. But there is no need to discuss this aspect of it, really. You are not fools, any of you, no matter how emotional or impetuous you are.

“You know as I know that there will be universal peace if the male population is limited to one per one hundred women. All forms of random violence will very simply come to an end.

“The reign of peace will be something the world has never known. Then the male population can be increased gradually. But for the conceptual framework to be changed, the males must be gone. Who can dispute that? It may not even be necessary to keep the one in a hundred. But it would be generous to do so. And so I will allow this. At least as we begin.”

I could see that Gabrielle was about to speak. I tried to give her a silent signal to be quiet, but she ignored me.

“All right, the effects are obvious,” she said. “But when you speak in terms of wholesale extermination, then questions of peace become ridiculous.
You’re abandoning one half of the world’s population. If men and women were born without arms and legs, this might be a peaceful world as well.”

“The men deserve what will happen to them. As a species, they will reap what they have sown. And remember, I speak of a temporary cleansing—a retreat, as it were. It’s the simplicity of it which is beautiful. Collectively the lives of these men do not equal the lives of women who have been killed at the hands of men over the centuries. You know it and I know it. Now, tell me, how many men over the centuries have fallen at the hands of women? If you brought back to life every man slain by a woman, do you think these creatures would fill even this house?

“But you see, these points don’t matter. Again, we know what I say is true. What matters—what is relevant and even more exquisite than the proposition itself—is that we now have the means to make it happen. I am indestructible. You are equipped to be my angels. And there is no one who can oppose us with success.”

“That’s not true,” Maharet said.

A little flash of anger colored Akasha’s cheeks; a glorious blush of red that faded and left her as inhuman looking as before.

“You are saying that
you
can stop me?” she asked, her mouth stiffening. “You are rash to suggest this. Will you suffer the death of Eric, and Mael, and Jessica, for such a point?”

Maharet didn’t answer. Mael was visibly shaken but with anger not fear. He glanced at Jesse and at Maharet and then at me. I could feel his hatred.

Akasha continued to stare at Maharet.

“Oh, I know you, believe me,” Akasha went on, her voice softening slightly. “I know how you have survived through all the years unchanged. I have seen you a thousand times in the eyes of others; I know you dream now that your sister lives. And perhaps she does—in some pathetic form. I know your hatred of me has only festered; and you reach back in your mind, all the way back, to the very beginning as if you could find there some rhyme or reason for what is happening now. But as you yourself told me long ago when we talked together in a palace of mud brick on the banks of the Nile River, there is no rhyme or reason. There is nothing! There are things visible and invisible; and horrible things can befall the most innocent of us all. Don’t you see—this is as crucial to what I do now as all else.”

Again, Maharet didn’t answer. She sat rigid, only her darkly beautiful eyes showing a faint glimmer of what might have been pain.

“I shall
make
the rhyme or reason,” Akasha said, with a trace of anger. “I shall
make
the future; I shall define goodness; I shall define peace. And
I don’t call on mythic gods or goddesses or spirits to justify my actions, on abstract morality. I do not call on history either! I don’t look for my mother’s heart and brain in the dirt!”

A shiver ran through the others. A little bitter smile played on Santino’s lips. And protectively, it seemed, Louis looked towards the mute figure of Maharet.

Marius was anxious lest this go further.

“Akasha,” he said in entreaty, “even if it could be done, even if the mortal population did not rise against you, and the men did not find some way to destroy you long before such a plan could be accomplished—”

“You’re a fool, Marius, or you think I am. Don’t you think I know what this world is capable of? What absurd mixture of the savage and the technologically astute makes up the mind of modern man?”

“My Queen, I don’t think you know it!” Marius said. “Truly, I don’t. I don’t think you can hold in your mind the full conception of what the world is. None of us can; it is too varied, too immense; we seek to embrace it with our reason; but we can’t do it. You know a world; but it is not
the
world; it is the world you have selected from a dozen other worlds for reasons within yourself.”

She shook her head; another flare of anger. “Don’t try my patience, Marius,” she said. “I spared you for a very simple reason. Lestat wanted you spared. And because you are strong and you can be of help to me. But that is all there is to it, Marius. Tread with care.”

A silence fell between them. Surely he realized that she was lying. I realized it. She loved him and it humiliated her, and so she sought to hurt him. And she had. Silently, he swallowed his rage.

“Even if it could be done,” he pressed gently, “can you honestly say that human beings have done so badly that they should receive such a punishment as this?”

I felt the relief course through me. I’d known he would have the courage, I’d known that he would find some way to take it into the deeper waters, no matter how she threatened him; he would say all that I had struggled to say.