Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis Read online

  "Come to Fareed and Seth," I said. "They are physicians for us all. Come to me. Yes, Amel hears all but, hearing all, can't always hear any one. Come."

  "Are they physicians for us all?" he asked.

  "They have to be. If we aren't all one--ghosts, spirits, blood drinkers--then what are we? We're lost, and we can't be lost. We won't stand for it anymore to be lost."

  He smiled. "Oh yes," he said. He seemed as impervious to the bracing air as I was. Yet his cheeks were slightly reddened and his eyes shining. "I've heard those words before on the lips of ghosts within this house."

  "Well, then, go to them and come to me," I said. I was feeling the tears rise in my eyes. In fact, I felt such strong emotions I didn't quite know what to do or say. I felt desperation. "Listen to me, you must. The Court's too busy with being a court. But what is the point of the Court if not to unite all of us? Fareed and Seth are working in their new laboratories in Paris. And Armand's house in Saint-Germain-des-Pres is the Paris home of the Court. You know all this."

  "Oh, yes, I know it," he said but he wasn't comforted or encouraged. What was holding him back? What was he not saying?

  I couldn't bear this. I couldn't bear the thought of Thorne and Cyril only yards away waiting for me, overhearing all, and thinking what I would never know, and being there, always being there. I didn't know what I wanted, or what to do with the misery I felt, only that some raw feeling had been discovered in me that had been buried all this while in superficial concerns and random pleasures.

  Inside the house, the boy was singing again, and the harpsichord notes seemed to be chasing at heated speed his sweet rushing syllables. How safe and strong the vast place seemed for a moment, against the random chaos of the drifting snow.

  "Beware, Lestat," said Gremt. He pressed my hand tightly. "Beware Amel. Beware Memnoch. Beware Rhoshamandes."

  "I understand, Gremt," I said, assuring him.

  I nodded. I found myself smiling. It was a sad smile, but a smile. I wished somehow I could convey to him, without pride, that all my life I'd been menaced by this and that adversary, all but murdered by those I'd loved, and even almost destroyed by my own despair. I always survived. I really didn't know what fear was, not as any permanent fixture in my heart. I just didn't "get" fear. I didn't "get" caution.

  "All right, I'm going," I said and I took him by his shoulders and quickly kissed his cheeks.

  "I'm glad you came, more than I can tell you," he replied. Then he turned and went back into the open door, and into the yellow light, and the door closed and the door appeared to vanish in the darkness of the wall.

  I walked off through the silent snow, away from Thorne and Cyril and away from the warm yellow lights of the monastery windows. The boy was improvising those words he sang, to a concerto that never had words, and I realized in an exquisitely painful moment that he had likely spent his eternity doing such things, weaving such beauty, creating such magnificent songs, and marveled that Notker had given him this, or that he could give such things to Notker. All the world was filled with immortals who had no such purpose, no such thread to follow through the labyrinth of chance and mischance.

  "Do you really not know what was bothering that spirit?" asked Amel in a low contemptuous voice. "Or are you simply pretending to be stupid in order to make me mad?"

  "Well, he's obviously afraid for me," I said. "He fears you, he fears Rhoshamandes...."

  "No, no, no," said Amel. "Do you not know what is wrong with him, inside of him, what he's suffering?"

  "So what is it?"

  "He can't disperse the body anymore, you idiot," he said. "He's trapped in it. He can't vanish on cue. He can't disappear and reappear and dart from one place to another in the blink of an eye! He's caught in the solid body of his own devising and refining. He's flesh and blood now and he can't get out of it!"

  I stood there motionless watching the snow. Far away, very far away, people laughed in a village tavern. The snow thickened. The cold was nothing to me.

  "You mean this?"

  "Yes, and he's confided it to Magnus," said Amel, "and he's shaken the ghost's confidence in his own material body. He's shaken them all. Hesketh is in fear now. Riccardo is in fear now. They are all in fear of the particle bodies they have created for themselves, that they may be imprisoned as he is now imprisoned. He wanted to ask you to drink his blood." Amel started laughing, his wild mad laugh. "Don't you see? The miserable spirit Gremt has gotten what he wanted: to be flesh and blood; and now there's no reversing it." He went on howling with laughter.

  I wanted to protest, to say "How the Hell do you know?" but I had the strong sense that he did know and he was right. So what was this body in which Gremt talked and walked and slept? Could he ingest food? Did he sleep? Did he dream? Had he any telepathic power?

  "Teskhamen knows," said Amel. "Teskhamen knows and did not mean for me to know, or you to know, and by way of trying to hide it, he revealed it to me." He laughed again. "Such geniuses!"

  I said nothing for a moment. And then I looked back at the nearest window, at the light flickering beyond the snow in the leaded diamond panes of glass.

  "That must be perfectly horrible," I whispered.

  Amel answered me with more laughter. "Let's be off to find Louis," he said.

  I didn't care about Amel. I thought of what this must mean for Gremt. I thought of what it had to mean. I weighed all aspects of it in light of what I knew of Gremt and ghosts and spirits. And I knew how this spirit had wanted to become flesh and blood.

  "Well, he can die, then, and be a spirit once more, can't he?" I said.

  "I don't know," said Amel. "Do you think he's willing to find out? No being on the earth wants to die, in case you haven't noticed."

  Probably not. Most assuredly not.

  "Come now, enough of these 'things,' " he said with a tone of remarkable weariness. "New Orleans waits. Louis waits. And if he hasn't come down to New Orleans as you asked, I say we go to New York and get him."

  He had mentioned Louis countless times in the last six months, but the strange thing was, I didn't trust him with all these mentions of how I needed Louis, and ought to write to Louis, and ought to pick up one of the many telephones around me and call Louis. I had some deep fear that he was in fact jealous of Louis, but I was ashamed of that feeling. Now he was saying, Let's go, let's find Louis.

  "Lestat, don't I always know what's best for you?" he asked. "Who was it told you decades ago to restore the Chateau? Who was it came to you in the mirror at Trinity Gate with the vision of what I was, so that you wouldn't fear me?"

  "And who was it urged Rhoshamandes to take my son captive?" I asked angrily. "And urged Rhoshamandes to kill the great Maharet and would have driven him to kill her sister?"

  He sighed. "You are merciless," he muttered.

  Thorne came up close to me, with Cyril not far behind. Cyril was such a big hulk of a blood drinker that he made Thorne look a little small. Male beings like that know an insolent fearlessness that smaller men never quite know. But when I didn't move, when I just stood there in the snow, with the snow covering my head and my shoulders as if I were a statue in a park, the two of them said nothing.

  "You need Louis," Amel said. "I always know what you need. Besides--."

  "Besides what?"

  "I like to look at him through your eyes."

  "I don't want to think of you inside of Louis," I said.

  "Oh, don't concern yourself. I don't go into Louis. Weak ones like Louis have never interested me. Consider those who heard 'the Voice.' Were any of them as human as Louis? No, they were not. If you must know, I can't find Louis. I can't go into Louis. Maybe in a century or two, yes, he'll be able to hear me, but for now, no. But I like to look at him through your eyes."

  "Why?"

  He sighed. "Something happens to your senses when you look on Louis. Behold Louis. I don't know. I see him more vividly than I sometimes see the others. I see a blood drinker. I think I see a whole life in Loui
s when I see Louis through your eyes. I want to know whole lives. I want to know big things, whole things, long things."

  I smiled. Did he know when I was smiling? I was impressed by the continuity of what he was saying. Long things indeed. He spoke in brilliant bursts, but seldom did his thoughts hold to a continuity. Seldom was his train of thought long.

  He was correct that most of those who heard his Voice last year had been the older ones....

  "You like the ones with power," I said. "You like to go into those who can make fire."

  Long raw moan of misery.

  "And your beloved Louis, if he has the power to make fire, would not discover it and not use it, unless of course someone threatens those he loves."

  That was likely very true.

  "Listen, I'm closer to you than any other being in creation," he said. "But I can't see you, can I, when I'm inside of you. I only see what you see. And something happens when you are with Louis, something happens when you reach out to touch him. I wish I could see you as he sees you. He has green eyes. I like green eyes. My Mekare had green eyes."

  This troubled me, and I wasn't sure quite why. What if he suddenly wanted to hurt Louis? What if he became jealous of Louis--of my affection for Louis?

  "Nonsense, go to him," he said. Calm voice. Manly voice. "Am I jealous of your son, Viktor? Am I jealous of your beloved daughter, Rose? You need Louis and you know it, and he's ready now to surrender. He's held back on principle long enough. I sense--." He broke off. I heard a sound like a hiss.

  "You sense what?"

  "I don't know. I want you to go to him. You waste your time and my time! I want to go up! I want to be in the clouds."

  I didn't move.

  "Amel," I said. "The things Gremt said about you, were they true?"

  Silence. Confusion in him. Agitation.

  Again came that flash: a city of glistening buildings falling into the sea. Was it a real city, or was it some dream of a city?

  A spasm in my throat, and in my temples. I looked up into the blinding swirl of snow. And then I closed my eyes. I saw the burning city etched on the darkness.

  A beat. A moment. The soundlessness of snow is remarkably beautiful. I had a hand filled with snow. And my fingers suddenly curled around the snow though I hadn't told them to.

  "Stop that," I said.

  No answer from him. There was a faint pain in my fingers as I relaxed them against his will. This really alarmed me. What if he could take over my entire body like this, make me stand, make me sit, make me go up--?

  "Gentlemen," I said beckoning to Cyril and Thorne. "I'm going up and over the sea. The sun's just setting on the city of New Orleans."

  Thorne nodded. Cyril said nothing.

  "I want to be in the only city I love more than I love Paris," I said as if I were speaking to people who cared.

  "Where you go, we go," said Cyril with a shrug. "Long as I feed sometime or other in the next fortnight, what's it to me if you want to go to China?"

  "Don't say that," Thorne muttered, rolling his eyes. "We're ready when you are, Prince."

  I laughed. I think I liked Cyril a little better than Thorne, but then Thorne had his moments too. And Thorne had suffered agony when Maharet was killed. Maharet had been the maker and the goddess of Thorne. Thorne had begged for permission to lead a band of vengeful vampires to burn Rhoshamandes for the slaying of Maharet. So the real and true Thorne was only just emerging from that grief.

  "All right, gentlemen, and now we make for the stars."

  I shot upwards with all my strength, traveling above the clouds within seconds. I knew they were right behind me. Did they see the constellations as I saw them? Did they see the great white moon as I saw it? Or were they simply fixed on me as they struggled to keep up with me?

  With all my strength I sent out my call.

  Armand, Benji--tell my beloved Louis I'm on my way.

  Over and over I sent out the call, as if my telepathic voice could strike the moon and be deflected with its light, shining down on the busy world of New York, on the many rooms and crypts of Trinity Gate, as I rose higher and higher and soared across the great dark void of the Atlantic.

  3

  Garekyn

  AS THE SUN set in New York on this mild winter evening, Garekyn Zweck Brovotkin was walking briskly up Fifth Avenue, headed for a trio of Upper East Side townhouses called Trinity Gate. The air was fresh and clean, or clean as it could ever be in New York, and he had hope in his heart.

  This might prove a colossal waste of his time, he realized, but then what did he have in this world but time, so why not check out the mysterious resident of Trinity Gate--a youngling radio star Garekyn had been listening to of late, an audacious character by the name of Benji Mahmoud, who claimed to be a "blood drinker"--a species of mutational immortal--and spoke in a heated whisper over the internet nightly to other mutated beings who referenced again and again the name of a controlling force in their lives called "Amel"?

  Amel.

  It was a name Garekyn had not heard spoken in twelve thousand years, and he could not afford really to ignore it.

  The broadcasts of the blood drinker had been going on for years. They lasted from one to two hours nightly; and thereafter the internet stream was made up of recordings of older broadcasts, and Garekyn had sifted carefully through all that material for the last six months until he had exhausted all broadcasts currently available in media of any form. He had learned all he could in this way about Benji Mahmoud and the beings who made up Benji's universe: blood drinkers all throughout the world, thought to be fictional by the New York journalists who wrote now and then on the "phenomenon" of Benji's "program," though human ears could not know the full extent of it.

  Ah yes, Garekyn thought as he walked faster now, it might all be a waste of time. But he loved New York at twilight, with the traffic thickening, and lights coming on brilliantly all around him in towers and townhouses, and people taking to the streets as they left their places of employment to join in the vigorous nightlife that would go on unabated until the small hours of the following morning.

  And so if I do not find literal immortals on this night, Garekyn thought, what have I lost?

  Garekyn was a tall male, just over six feet in height, of a powerful and lean build with long black curling hair to his shoulders. There was a heavy gold streak in his hair, on the right side of the center part, and he had fierce engaging brownish-black eyes. His nose was long and narrow, and he had very dark brown skin. He was walking fast, wanting to reach his destination before darkness. The exalted tribe of Benji Mahmoud came alive only at darkness, according to their "mythology," and he was out to discover if the mythology had a bit of truth.

  In 1889, Garekyn had come awake to a planetary culture viciously marred by deep ignorance and judgment of people based on race. But strong pejorative attitudes towards people of color had never penetrated to Garekyn's soul, because the long-ago ancient world into which he'd been born was so very different.

  In those days, when Garekyn had been made and sent to Earth, most everybody on the planet was the color that he was. Most everyone had Garekyn's black hair and dark eyes. And newly awakened in 1889, in Siberia, by a loving Russian anthropologist, Garekyn had been treated not as an inferior black man but as a miracle for which science could not account--a being sleeping unconscious in the ice, desiccated and seemingly without feeling, who through simple warmth and hydration had been restored to vitality.

  Prince Alexi Brovotkin, the man who rescued and educated Garekyn, was an amateur anthropologist and collector of fossils, son of a Russian father and an English mother--a committed scholar who eventually wrote a lengthy paper on the discovery of Garekyn, only to have it rejected by every periodical to which he submitted it. Not a single scientist in Russia or Europe ever accepted Brovotkin's invitation to meet the twelve-thousand-year-old man he had delivered from the frozen wastes of Siberia. Of course, twelve thousand years was just an estimate of how long Gareky
n might have been frozen. No one could actually know.

  No matter. Prince Alexi Brovotkin loved Garekyn from the moment that Garekyn had opened his eyes and looked at him. Brovotkin had taken Garekyn from Siberia back to his palace in Saint Petersburg, and within less than a week, the shocked and dazzled Garekyn had been baptized into the modern world by an experience that surpassed anything he had ever imagined.

  It was January 15 in the year 1890 and Prince Brovotkin had taken Garekyn to the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty ballet by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky at the lavish gilded Mariinsky Theatre.

  Garekyn had never conceived of such music or a spectacle as ornate and lovely as he beheld on the stage that night. Never mind the splendors of Saint Petersburg, or the libraries and luxuries of Brovotkin's vast home. Never mind the glittering decor of the Mariinsky Theatre. It was the music and the dancing that enchanted Garekyn--the coordinated power of orchestral instruments to make an intoxicating stream of music to which highly disciplined humans performed rhythmic movements of near-impossible artifice and grace.

  It took years for Garekyn to explain what he had felt when he watched The Sleeping Beauty ballet and why this immense affirmation of innate goodness was so important to him. But the pleasure he experienced that night had convinced him that he bore no horrible, irrevocable guilt from some former and half-remembered omission or commission.

  "We made the right choice," he said haltingly and repeatedly to Prince Brovotkin that night and for many nights after. "My brothers and my sister and I. We were right. This world, this gracious world, exonerates us!"

  Ever after, Garekyn was convinced that if his original companions were alive and well and living in that century, he would find them in palaces devoted to the performance of opera or ballet, for they would find this new music and these new performances as enchanting as he did. They too would see it as emblematic of the splendor of humanity, of an innate goodness that surfaced in innumerable and unforeseen ways.

  Someone a long time ago, a very long time ago, had used those words, "the splendor of humanity." That was in a different language, a language Garekyn could hear in his head but not write, yet Garekyn had translated the sentiment easily into the Russian or English he'd been learning from Prince Brovotkin. Garekyn's mind had been equipped for the quick understanding of language and the quick analysis of patterns and systems. He loved learning. And Prince Brovotkin loved him for it. But Garekyn's earliest memories were broken and fragmentary. They accosted him in unexpected and sometimes inexplicable flashes. His mind had been bruised and hurt in the catastrophe which had locked him in the ice. And who knew how the passage of time had affected Garekyn? He sought with all his might to recover every bit of vagrant memory that he could.