The Vampire Chronicles Collection Page 15

  “ ‘And why not? Do you think him so strong!’ she said, her eyes on the statue in the square, two immense pools of light.

  “ ‘He is stronger than you know! Stronger than you dream! How do you mean to kill him? You can’t measure his skill. You don’t know!’ I pleaded with her but could see her utterly unmoved, like a child staring in fascination through the window of a toy shop. Her tongue moved suddenly between her teeth and touched her lower lip in a strange flicker that sent a mild shock through my body. I tasted blood. I felt something palpable and helpless in my hands. I wanted to kill. I could smell and hear humans on the paths of the square, moving about the market, along the levee. I was about to take her, make her look at me, shake her if I had to, to make her listen, when she turned to me with her great liquid eyes. ‘I love you, Louis,’ she said.

  “ ‘Then listen to me, Claudia, I beg you,’ I whispered, holding her, pricked suddenly by a nearby collection of whispers, the slow, rising articulation of human speech over the mingled sounds of the night. ‘He’ll destroy you if you try to kill him. There is no way you can do such a thing for sure. You don’t know how. And pitting yourself against him you’ll lose everything. Claudia, I can’t bear this.’

  “There was a barely perceptible smile on her lips. ‘No, Louis,’ she whispered. ‘I can kill him. And I want to tell you something else now, a secret between you and me.’

  “I shook my head but she pressed even closer to me, lowering her lids so that her rich lashes almost brushed the roundness of her cheeks. ‘The secret is, Louis, that I want to kill him. I will enjoy it!’

  “I knelt beside her, speechless, her eyes studying me as they’d done so often in the past; and then she said, ‘I kill humans every night. I seduce them, draw them close to me, with an insatiable hunger, a constant never-ending search for something … something, I don’t know what it is …’ She brought her fingers to her lips now and pressed her lips, her mouth partly open so I could see the gleam of her teeth. ‘And I care nothing about them—where they came from, where they would go—if I did not meet them on the way. But I dislike him! I want him dead and will have him dead. I shall enjoy it.’

  “ ‘But Claudia, he is not mortal. He’s immortal. No illness can touch him. Age has no power over him. You threaten a life which might endure to the end of the world!’

  “ ‘Ah, yes, that’s it, precisely!’ she said with reverential awe. ‘A lifetime that might have endured for centuries. Such blood, such power. Do you think I’ll possess his power and my own power when I take him?’

  “I was enraged now. I rose suddenly and turned away from her. I could hear the whispering of humans near me. They were whispering of the father and the daughter, of some frequent sight of loving devotion. I realized they were talking of us.

  “ ‘It’s not necessary,’ I said to her. ‘It goes beyond all need, all common sense, all …’

  “ ‘What! Humanity? He’s a killer!’ she hissed. ‘Lone predator!’ She repeated his own term, mocking it. ‘Don’t interfere with me or seek to know the time I choose to do it, nor try to come between us.…’ She raised her hand now to hush me and caught mine in an iron grasp, her tiny fingers biting into my tight, tortured flesh. ‘If you do, you will bring me destruction by your interference. I can’t be discouraged.’

  “She was gone then in a flurry of bonnet ribbons and clicking slippers. I turned, paying no attention to where I went, wishing the city would swallow me, conscious now of the hunger rising to overtake reason. I was almost loath to put an end to it. I needed to let the lust, the excitement blot out all consciousness, and I thought of the kill over and over and over, walking slowly up this street and down the next, moving inexorably towards it, saying, ‘It’s a string which is pulling me through the labyrinth. I am not pulling the string. The string is pulling me.…’ And then I stood in the Rue Conti listening to a dull thundering, a familiar sound. It was the fencers above in the salon, advancing on the hollow wooden floor, forward, back again, scuttling, and the silver zinging of the foils. I stood back against the wall, where I could see them through the high naked windows, the young men duelling late into the night, left arm poised like the arm of a dancer, grace advancing towards death, grace thrusting for the heart, images of the young Freniere now driving the silver blade forward, now being pulled by it towards hell. Someone had come down the narrow wooden steps to the street—a young boy, a boy so young he had the smooth, plump cheeks of a child; his face was pink and flushed from the fencing, and beneath his smart gray coat and ruffled shirt there was the sweet smell of cologne and salt. I could feel his heat as he emerged from the dim light of the stairwell. He was laughing to himself, talking almost inaudibly to himself, his brown hair falling down over his eyes as he went along, shaking his head, the whispers rising, then falling off. And then he stopped short, his eyes on me. He stared, and his eyelids quivered and he laughed quickly, nervously. ‘Excuse me!’ he said now in French. ‘You gave me a start!’ And then, just as he moved to make a ceremonial bow and perhaps go around me, he stood still, and the shock spread over his flushed face. I could see the heart beating in the pink flesh of his cheeks, smell the sudden sweat of his young, taut body.

  “ ‘You saw me in the lamplight,’ I said to him. ‘And my face looked to you like the mask of death.’

  “His lips parted and his teeth touched and involuntarily he nodded, his eyes dazed.

  “ ‘Pass by!’ I said to him. ‘Fast!’ ”

  The vampire paused, then moved as if he meant to go on. But he stretched his long legs under the table and, leaning back, pressed his hands to his head as if exerting a great pressure on his temples.

  The boy, who had drawn himself up into a crouched position, his hands hugging his arms, unwound slowly. He glanced at the tapes and then back at the vampire. “But you killed someone that night,” he said.

  “Every night,” said the vampire.

  “Why did you let him go then?” asked the boy.

  “I don’t know,” said the vampire, but it did not have the tone of truly I don’t know, but rather, let it be. “You look tired,” said the vampire. “You look cold.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the boy quickly. “The room’s a little cold; I don’t care about that. You’re not cold, are you?”

  “No.” The vampire smiled and then his shoulders moved with silent laughter.

  A moment passed in which the vampire seemed to be thinking and the boy to be studying the vampire’s face. The vampire’s eyes moved to the boy’s watch.

  “She didn’t succeed, did she?” the boy asked softly.

  “What do you honestly think?” asked the vampire. He had settled back in his chair. He looked at the boy intently.

  “That she was … as you said, destroyed,” said the boy; and he seemed to feel the words, so that he swallowed after he’d said the word destroyed. “Was she?” he asked.

  “Don’t you think that she could do it?” asked the vampire.

  “But he was so powerful. You said yourself you never knew what powers he had, what secrets he knew. How could she even be sure how to kill him? How did she try?”

  The vampire looked at the boy for a long time, his expression unreadable to the boy, who found himself looking away, as though the vampire’s eyes were burning lights. “Why don’t you drink from that bottle in your pocket?” asked the vampire. “It will make you warm.”

  “Oh, that …” said the boy. “I was going to. I just.…”

  The vampire laughed. “You didn’t think it was polite!” he said, and he suddenly slapped his thigh.

  “That’s true,” the boy shrugged, smiling now; and he took the small flask out of his jacket pocket, unscrewed the gold cap, and took a sip. He held the bottle, now looking at the vampire.

  “No,” the vampire smiled and raised his hand to wave away the offer.

  Then his face became serious again and, sitting back, he went on.

  “Lestat had a musician friend in the Rue Dumaine. We
had seen him at a recital in the home of a Madame LeClair, who lived there also, which was at that time an extremely fashionable street; and this Madame LeClair, with whom Lestat was also occasionally amusing himself, had found the musician a room in another mansion nearby, where Lestat visited him often. I told you he played with his victims, made friends with them, seduced them into trusting and liking him, even loving him, before he killed. So he apparently played with this young boy, though it had gone on longer than any other such friendship I had ever observed. The young boy wrote good music, and often Lestat brought fresh sheets of it home and played the songs on the square grand in our parlor. The boy had a great talent, but you could tell that this music would not sell, because it was too disturbing. Lestat gave him money and spent evening after evening with him, often taking him to restaurants the boy could have never afforded, and he bought him all the paper and pens which he needed for the writing of his music.

  “As I said, it had gone on far longer than any such friendship Lestat had ever had. And I could not tell whether he had actually become fond of a mortal in spite of himself or was simply moving towards a particularly grand betrayal and cruelty. Several times he’d indicated to Claudia and me that he was headed out to kill the boy directly, but he had not. And, of course, I never asked him what he felt because it wasn’t worth the great uproar my question would have produced. Lestat entranced with a mortal! He probably would have destroyed the parlor furniture in a rage.

  “The next night—after that which I just described to you—he jarred me miserably by asking me to go with him to the boy’s flat. He was positively friendly, in one of those moods when he wanted my companionship. Enjoyment could bring that out of him. Wanting to see a good play, the regular opera, the ballet. He always wanted me along. I think I must have seen Macbeth with him fifteen times. We went to every performance, even those by amateurs, and Lestat would stride home afterwards, repeating the lines to me and even shouting out to passers-by with an outstretched finger, ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!’ until they skirted him as if he were drunk. But this effervescence was frenetic and likely to vanish in an instant; just a word or two of amiable feeling on my part, some suggestion that I found his companionship pleasant, could banish all such affairs for months. Even years. But now he came to me in such a mood and asked me to go to the boy’s room. He was not above pressing my arm as he urged me. And I, dull, catatonic, gave him some miserable excuse—thinking only of Claudia, of the agent, of imminent disaster. I could feel it and wondered that he did not feel it. And finally he picked up a book from the floor and threw it at me, shouting, ‘Read your damn poems, then! Rot!’ And he bounded out.

  “This disturbed me. I cannot tell you how it disturbed me. I wished him cold, impassive, gone. I resolved to plead with Claudia to drop this. I felt powerless, and hopelessly fatigued. But her door had been locked until she left, and I had glimpsed her only for a second while Lestat was chattering, a vision of lace and loveliness as she slipped on her coat; puffed sleeves again and a violet ribbon on her breast, her white lace stockings showing beneath the hem of the little gown, and her white slippers immaculate. She cast a cold look at me as she went out.

  “When I returned later, satiated and for a while too sluggish for my own thoughts to bother me, I gradually began to sense that this was the night. She would try tonight.

  “I cannot tell you how I knew this. Things about the flat disturbed me, alerted me. Claudia moved in the back parlor behind closed doors. And I fancied I heard another voice there, a whisper. Claudia never brought anyone to our flat; no one did except Lestat, who brought his women of the streets. But I knew there was someone there, yet I got no strong scent, no proper sounds. And then there were aromas in the air of food and drink. And chrysanthemums stood in the silver vase on the square grand—flowers which, to Claudia, meant death.

  “Then Lestat came, singing something soft under his breath, his walking stick making a rat-tat-tat on the rails of the spiral stairs. He came down the long hall, his face flushed from the kill, his lips pink; and he set his music on the piano. ‘Did I kill him or did I not kill him!’ He flashed the question at me now with a pointing finger. ‘What’s your guess?’

  “ ‘You did not,’ I said numbly. ‘Because you invited me to go with you, and would never have invited me to share that kill.’

  “ ‘Ah, but! Did I kill him in a rage because you would not go with me!’ he said and threw back the cover from the keys. I could see that he would be able to go on like this until dawn. He was exhilarated. I watched him flip through the music, thinking, Can he die? Can he actually die? And does she mean to do this? At one point, I wanted to go to her and tell her we must abandon everything, even the proposed trip, and live as we had before. But I had the feeling now that there was no retreat. Since the day she’d begun to question him, this—whatever it was to be—was inevitable. And I felt a weight on me, holding me in the chair.

  “He pressed two chords with his hands. He had an immense reach and even in life could have been a fine pianist. But he played without feeling; he was always outside the music, drawing it out of the piano as if by magic, by the virtuosity of his vampire senses and control; the music did not come through him, was not drawn through him by himself. ‘Well, did I kill him?’ he asked me again.

  “ ‘No, you did not,’ I said again, though I could just as easily have said the opposite. I was concentrating on keeping my face a mask.

  “ ‘You’re right. I did not,’ he said. ‘It excites me to be close to him, to think over and over, I can kill him and I will kill him but not now. And then to leave him and find someone who looks as nearly like him as possible. If he had brothers … why, I’d kill them one by one. The family would succumb to a mysterious fever which dried up the very blood in their bodies!’ he said, now mocking a barker’s tone. ‘Claudia has a taste for families. Speaking of families, I suppose you heard. The Freniere place is supposed to be haunted; they can’t keep an overseer and the slaves run away.’

  “This was something I did not wish to hear in particular. Babette had died young, insane, restrained finally from wandering towards the ruins of Pointe du Lac, insisting she had seen the devil there and must find him; I’d heard of it in wisps of gossip. And then came the funeral notices. I’d thought occasionally of going to her, of trying some way to rectify what I had done; and other times I thought it would all heal itself; and in my new life of nightly killing, I had grown far from the attachment I’d felt for her or for my sister or any mortal. And I watched the tragedy finally as one might from a theater balcony, moved from time to time, but never sufficiently to jump the railing and join the players on the stage.

  “ ‘Don’t talk of her,’ I said.

  “ ‘Very well. I was talking of the plantation. Not her. Her! Your lady love, your fancy.’ He smiled at me. ‘You know, I had it all my way finally in the end, didn’t I? But I was telling you about my young friend and how …’

  “ ‘I wish you would play the music,’ I said softly, unobtrusively, but as persuasively as possible. Sometimes this worked with Lestat. If I said something just right he found himself doing what I’d said. And now he did just that: with a little snarl, as if to say, ‘You fool,’ he began playing the music. I heard the doors of the back parlor open and Claudia’s steps move down the hall. Don’t come, Claudia, I was thinking, feeling; go away from it before we’re all destroyed. But she came on steadily until she reached the hall mirror. I could hear her opening the small table drawer, and then the zinging of her hairbrush. She was wearing a floral perfume. I turned slowly to face her as she appeared in the door, still all in white, and moved across the carpet silently towards the piano. She stood at the end of the keyboard, her hands folded on the wood, her chin resting on her hands, her eyes fixed on Lestat.

  “I could see his profile and her small face beyond, looking up at him. ‘What is it now!’ he said, turning the page and letting his hand drop to his thigh. ‘You irritate me. Your very presenc
e irritates me!’ His eyes moved over the page.

  “ ‘Does it?’ she said in her sweetest voice.

  “ ‘Yes, it does. And I’ll tell you something else. I’ve met someone who would make a better vampire than you do.’

  “This stunned me. But I didn’t have to urge him to go on. ‘Do you get my meaning?’ he said to her.

  “ ‘Is it supposed to frighten me?’ she asked.

  “ ‘You’re spoiled because you’re an only child,’ he said. ‘You need a brother. Or rather, I need a brother. I get weary of you both. Greedy, brooding vampires that haunt our own lives. I dislike it.’

  “ ‘I suppose we could people the world with vampires, the three of us,’ she said.

  “ ‘You think so!’ he said, smiling, his voice with a note of triumph. ‘Do you think you could do it? I suppose Louis has told you how it was done or how he thinks it was done. You don’t have the power. Either of you,’ he said.

  “This seemed to disturb her. Something she had not accounted for. She was studying him. I could see she did not entirely believe him.

  “ ‘And what gave you the power?’ she asked softly, but with a touch of sarcasm.

  “ ‘That, my dear, is one of those things which you may never know. For even the Erebus in which we live must have its aristocracy.’

  “ ‘You’re a liar,’ she said with a short laugh. And just as he touched his fingers to the keys again, she said, ‘But you upset my plans.’

  “ ‘Your plans?’ he asked.

  “ ‘I came to make peace with you, even if you are the father of lies. You’re my father,’ she said. ‘I want to make peace with you. I want things to be as they were.’