Queen of the Damned Page 9

  Now he was a ruined thing, walking too fast under the lowering night sky of Chicago in October. Last Sunday he had been in Paris, and the Friday before that in Edinburgh. Before Edinburgh, he had been in Stockholm and before that he couldn’t recall. The royalty check had caught up with him in Vienna, but he did not know how long ago that was.

  In all these places he frightened those he passed. The Vampire Lestat had a good phrase for it in his autobiography: “One of those tiresome mortals who has seen spirits . . . ” That’s me!

  Where was that book, The Vampire Lestat? Ah, somebody had stolen it off the park bench this afternoon while Daniel slept. Well, let them have it. Daniel had stolen it himself, and he’d read it three times already.

  But if only he had it now, he could sell it, maybe get enough for a glass of brandy to make him warm. And what was his net worth at this moment, this cold and hungry vagabond that shuffled along Michigan Avenue, hating the wind that chilled him through his worn and dirty clothes? Ten million? A hundred million? He didn’t know. Armand would know.

  You want money, Daniel? I’ll get it for you. It’s simpler than you think.

  A thousand miles south Armand waited on their private island, the island that belonged in fact to Daniel alone. And if only he had a quarter now, just a quarter, he could drop it into a pay phone and tell Armand that he wanted to come home. Out of the sky, they’d come to get him. They always did. Either the big plane with the velvet bedroom on it or the smaller one with the low ceiling and the leather chairs. Would anybody on this street lend him a quarter in exchange for a plane ride to Miami? Probably not.

  Armand, now! I want to be safe with you when Lestat goes on that stage tomorrow night.

  Who would cash this royalty check? No one. It was seven o’clock and the fancy shops along Michigan Avenue were for the most part closed, and he had no identification because his wallet had somehow disappeared day before yesterday. So dismal this glaring gray winter twilight, the sky boiling silently with low metallic clouds. Even the stores had taken on an uncommon grimness, with their hard facades of marble or granite, the wealth within gleaming like archaeological relics under museum glass. He plunged his hands in his pockets to warm them, and he bowed his head as the wind came with greater fierceness and the first sting of rain.

  He didn’t give a damn about the check, really. He couldn’t imagine pressing the buttons of a phone. Nothing here seemed particularly real to him, not even the chill. Only the dream seemed real, and the sense of impending disaster, that the Vampire Lestat had somehow set into motion something that even he could never control.

  Eat from a garbage can if you have to, sleep somewhere even if it’s a park. None of that matters. But he’d freeze if he lay down again in the open air, and besides the dream would come back.

  It was coming now every time he closed his eyes. And each time, it was longer, more full of detail. The red-haired twins were so tenderly beautiful. He did not want to hear them scream.

  The first night in his hotel room he’d ignored the whole thing. Meaningless. He’d gone back to reading Lestat’s autobiography, and glancing up now and then as Lestat’s rock video films played themselves out on the little black and white TV that came with that kind of dump.

  He’d been fascinated by Lestat’s audacity; yet the masquerade as rock star was so simple. Searing eyes, powerful yet slender limbs, and a mischievous smile, yes. But you really couldn’t tell. Or could you? He had never laid eyes on Lestat.

  But he was an expert on Armand, wasn’t he, he had studied every detail of Armand’s youthful body and face. Ah, what a delirious pleasure it had been to read about Armand in Lestat’s pages, wondering all the while if Lestat’s stinging insults and worshipful analyses had put Armand himself into a rage.

  In mute fascination, Daniel had watched that little clip on MTV portraying Armand as the coven master of the old vampires beneath the Paris cemetery, presiding over demonic rituals until the Vampire Lestat, the eighteenth-century iconoclast, had destroyed the Old Ways.

  Armand must have loathed it, his private history laid bare in flashing images, so much more crass than Lestat’s more thoughtful written history. Armand, whose eyes scanned perpetually the living beings around him, refusing even to speak of the undead. But it was impossible that he did not know.

  And all this for the multitudes—like the paperback report of an anthropologist, back from the inner circle, who sells the tribe’s secrets for a slot on the best-seller list.

  So let the demonic gods war with each other. This mortal has been to the top of the mountain where they cross swords. And he has come back. He has been turned away.

  The next night, the dream had returned with the clarity of a hallucination. He knew that it could not have been invented by him. He had never seen people quite like that, seen such simple jewelry made of bone and wood.

  The dream had come again three nights later. He’d been watching a Lestat rock video for the fifteenth time, perhaps—this one about the ancient and immovable Egyptian Father and Mother of the vampires, Those Who Must Be Kept:

  Akasha and Enkil,

  We are your children,

  but what do you give us?

  Is your silence

  A better gift than truth?

  And then Daniel was dreaming. And the twins were about to begin the feast. They would share the organs on the earthen plates. One would take the brain, the other the heart.

  He’d awakened with a sense of urgency, dread. Something terrible going to happen, something going to happen to all of us . . . And that was the first time he’d connected it with Lestat. He had wanted to pick up the phone then. It was four o’clock in the morning in Miami. Why the hell hadn’t he done it? Armand would have been sitting on the terrace of the villa, watching the tireless fleet of white boats wend its way back and forth from the Night Island. “Yes, Daniel?” That sensuous, mesmerizing voice. “Calm down and tell me where you are, Daniel.”

  But Daniel hadn’t called. Six months had passed since he had left the Night Island, and this time it was supposed to be for good. He had once and for all forsworn the world of carpets and limousines and private planes, of liquor closets stocked with rare vintages and dressing rooms full of exquisitely cut clothing, of the quiet overwhelming presence of his immortal lover who gave him every earthly possession he could want.

  But now it was cold and he had no room and no money, and he was afraid.

  You know where I am, you demon. You know what Lestat’s done. And you know I want to come home.

  What would Armand say to that?

  But I don’t know, Daniel. I listen. I try to know. I am not God, Daniel.

  Never mind. Just come, Armand. Come. It’s dark and cold in Chicago. And tomorrow night the Vampire Lestat will sing his songs on a San Francisco stage. And something bad is going to happen. This mortal knows.

  Without slowing his pace, Daniel reached down under the collar of his sagging sweat shirt and felt the heavy gold locket he always wore—the amulet, as Armand called it with his unacknowledged yet irrepressible flair for the dramatic—which held the tiny vial of Armand’s blood.

  And if he had never tasted that cup would he be having this dream, this vision, this portent of doom?

  People turned to look at him; he was talking to himself again, wasn’t he? And the wind made him sigh loudly. He had the urge for the first time in all these years to break open the locket and the vial, to feel that blood burn his tongue. Armand, come!

  The dream had visited him in its most alarming form this noon.

  He’d been sitting on a bench in the little park near the Water Tower Place. A newspaper had been left there, and when he opened it he saw the advertisement: “Tomorrow Night: The Vampire Lestat Live on Stage in San Francisco.” The cable would broadcast the concert at ten o’clock Chicago time. How nice for those who still lived indoors, could pay their rent, and had electricity. He had wanted to laugh at the whole thing, delight in it, revel in
it, Lestat surprising them all. But the chill had passed through him, becoming a deep jarring shock.

  And what if Armand does not know? But the record stores on the Night Island must have The Vampire Lestat in their windows. In the elegant lounges, they must be playing those haunting and hypnotic songs.

  It had even occurred to Daniel at that moment to go on to California on his own. Surely he could work some miracle, get his passport from the hotel, go into any bank with it for identification. Rich, yes so very rich, this poor mortal boy. . . .

  But how could he think of something so deliberate? The sun had been warm on his face and shoulders as he’d lain down on the bench. He’d folded the newspaper to make of it a pillow.

  And there was the dream that had been waiting all the time. . . .

  Midday in the world of the twins: the sun pouring down onto the clearing. Silence, except for the singing of the birds.

  And the twins kneeling quite still together, in the dust. Such pale women, their eyes green, their hair long and wavy and coppery red. Fine clothes they wore, white linen dresses that had come all the way from the markets of Nineveh, bought by the villagers to honor these powerful witches, whom the spirits obey.

  The funeral feast was ready. The mud bricks of the oven had been torn down and carried away, and the body lay steaming hot on the stone slab, the yellow juices running out of it where the crisp skin had broken, a black and naked thing with only a covering of cooked leaves. It horrified Daniel.

  But it horrified no one present, this spectacle, not the twins or the villagers who knelt to watch the feast begin.

  This feast was the right and the duty of the twins. This was their mother, the blackened body on the stone slab. And what was human must remain with the human. A day and night it may take to consume the feast, but all will keep watch until it is done.

  Now a current of excitement passes through the crowd around the clearing. One of the twins lifts the plate on which the brain rests together with the eyes, and the other nods and takes the plate that holds the heart.

  And so the division has been made. The beat of a drum rises, though Daniel cannot see the drummer. Slow, rhythmic, brutal.

  “Let the banquet begin.”

  But the ghastly cry comes, just as Daniel knew it would. Stop the soldiers. But he can’t. All this has happened somewhere, of that he is now certain. It is no dream, it is a vision. And he is not there. The soldiers storm the clearing, the villagers scatter, the twins set down the plates and fling themselves over the smoking feast. But this is madness.

  The soldiers tear them loose so effortlessly, and as the slab is lifted, the body falls, breaking into pieces, and the heart and the brain are thrown down into the dust. The twins scream and scream.

  But the villagers are screaming too, the soldiers are cutting them down as they run. The dead and the dying litter the mountain paths. The eyes of the mother have fallen from the plate into the dirt, and they, along with the heart and brain, are trampled underfoot.

  One of the twins, her arms pulled behind her back, cries to the spirits for vengeance. And they come, they do. It is a whirlwind. But not enough.

  If only it were over. But Daniel can’t wake up.

  Stillness. The air is full of smoke. Nothing stands where these people have lived for centuries. The mud bricks are scattered, clay pots are broken, all that will burn has burned. Infants with their throats slit lie naked on the ground as the flies come. No one will roast these bodies, no one will consume this flesh. It will pass out of the human race, with all its power and its mystery. The jackals are already approaching. And the soldiers have gone. Where are the twins! He hears the twins crying, but he cannot find them. A great storm is rumbling over the narrow road that twists down through the valley towards the desert. The spirits make the thunder. The spirits make the rain.

  His eyes opened. Chicago, Michigan Avenue at midday. The dream had gone out like a light turned off. He sat there shivering, sweating.

  A radio had been playing near him, Lestat singing in that haunting mournful voice of Those Who Must Be Kept.

  Mother and Father.

  Keep your silence,

  Keep your secrets,

  But those of you with tongues,

  sing my song.

  Sons and daughters

  Children of darkness

  Raise your voices

  Make a chorus

  Let heaven hear us

  Come together,

  Brother and sisters,

  Come to me.

  He had gotten up, started walking. Go into the Water Tower Place, so like the Night Island with its engulfing shops, endless music and lights, shining glass.

  And now it was almost eight o’clock and he had been walking continuously, running from sleep and from the dream. He was far from any music and light. How long would it go on next time? Would he find out whether they were alive or dead? My beauties, my poor beauties. . . .

  He stopped, turning his back to the wind for a moment, listening to the chimes somewhere, then spotting a dirty clock above a dime store lunch counter; yes, Lestat had risen on the West Coast. Who is with him? Is Louis there? And the concert, a little over twenty-four hours. Catastrophe! Armand, please.

  The wind gusted, pushed him back a few steps on the pavement, left him shivering violently. His hands were frozen. Had he ever been this cold in his life? Doggedly, he crossed Michigan Avenue with the crowd at the stoplight and stood at the plate glass windows of the bookstore, where he could see the book, The Vampire Lestat, on display.

  Surely Armand had read it, devouring every word in that eerie, horrible way he had of reading, of turning page after page without pause, eyes flashing over the words, until the book was finished, and then tossing it aside. How could a creature shimmer with such beauty yet incite such . . . what was it, revulsion? No, he had never been revolted by Armand, he had to admit it. What he always felt was ravening and hopeless desire.

  A young girl inside the warmth of the store picked up a copy of Lestat’s book, then stared at him through the window. His breath made steam on the glass in front of him. Don’t worry, my darling, I am a rich man. I could buy this whole store full of books and make it a present to you. I am lord and master of my own island, I am the Devil’s minion and he grants my every wish. Want to come take my arm?

  It had been dark for hours on the Florida coast. The Night Island was already thronged.

  The shops, restaurants, bars had opened their broad, seamless plate glass doors at sunset, on five levels of richly carpeted hallway. The silver escalators had begun their low, churning hum. Daniel closed his eyes and envisioned the walls of glass rising above the harbor terraces. He could almost hear the great roar of the dancing fountains, see the long narrow beds of daffodils and tulips blooming eternally out of season, hear the hypnotic music that beat like a heart beneath it all.

  And Armand, he was probably roaming the dimly lighted rooms of the villa, steps away from the tourists and the shoppers, yet utterly cut off by steel doors and white walls—a sprawling palace of floor-length windows and broad balconies, perched over white sand. Solitary, yet near to the endless commotion, its vast living room facing the twinkling lights of the Miami shore.

  Or maybe he had gone through one of the many unmarked doors into the public galleria itself. “To live and breathe among mortals” as he called it in this safe and self-contained universe which he and Daniel had made. How Armand loved the warm breezes of the Gulf, the endless springtime of the Night Island.

  No lights would go out until dawn.

  “Send someone for me, Armand, I need you! You know you want me to come home.”

  Of course it had happened this way over and over again. It did not need strange dreams, or Lestat to reappear, roaring like Lucifer from tape and film.

  Everything would go all right for months as Daniel felt compelled to move from city to city, walking the pavements of New York or Chicago or New Orleans. Then the sudden
disintegration. He’d realize he had not moved from his chair in five hours. Or he’d wake suddenly in a stale and unchanged bed, frightened, unable to remember the name of the city where he was, or where he’d been for days before. Then the car would come for him, then the plane would take him home.

  Didn’t Armand cause it? Didn’t he somehow drive Daniel to these periods of madness? Didn’t he by some evil magic dry up every source of pleasure, every fount of sustenance until Daniel welcomed the sight of the familiar chauffeur come to drive him to the airport, the man who was never shocked by Daniel’s demeanor, his unshaven face, his soiled clothes?

  When Daniel finally reached the Night Island, Armand would deny it.

  “You came back to me because you wanted to, Daniel,” Armand always said calmly, face still and radiant, eyes full of love. “There is nothing for you now, Daniel, except me. You know that. Madness waits out there.”

  “Same old dance,” Daniel invariably answered. And all that luxury, so intoxicating, soft beds, music, the wine glass placed in his hand. The rooms were always full of flowers, the foods he craved came on silver trays.

  Armand lay sprawled in a huge black velvet wing chair gazing at the television, Ganymede in white pants and white silk shirt, watching the news, the movies, the tapes he’d made of himself reading poetry, the idiot sitcoms, the dramas, the musicals, the silent films.

  “Come in, Daniel, sit down. I never expected you back so soon.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Daniel would say. “You wanted me here, you summoned me. I couldn’t eat, sleep, nothing, just wander and think of you. You did it.”

  Armand would smile, sometimes even laugh. Armand had a rich, beautiful laugh, always eloquent of gratitude as well as humor. He looked and sounded mortal when he laughed. “Calm yourself, Daniel. Your heart’s racing. It frightens me.” Small crease to the smooth forehead, the voice for a moment deepened by compassion. “Tell me what you want, Daniel, and I’ll get it for you. Why do you keep running away?”

  “Lies, you bastard. Say that you wanted me. You’ll torment me forever, won’t you, and then you’ll watch me die, and you’ll find that interesting, won’t you? It was true what Louis said. You watch them die, your mortal slaves, they mean nothing to you. You’ll watch the colors change in my face as I die.”