Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [9]
“Don’t you realize . . .” He trailed off, and out of his mind I subtracted the rest, that the Talamasca would be further inflamed, that it would be bad for everyone. The vampires, the Blood Hunters, the Children of the Millennia had all left New Orleans. Scattered in the dark were the vampires. It was a truce. And now I meant to shatter it!
“But they don’t know me, you see,” I said, “not in this form, they don’t. Only you do, my old friend, and that’s the horror. You know me, and that’s why this has to come about.”
I bent down, close to him, and kissed the side of his throat. My friend, my deepest friend in all the world once. And now we’ll have this union. Lust old and new. The boy I’d been loving him. I felt the blood pushing through the artery. My left arm slid beneath his right arm. Don’t hurt him. He couldn’t get away from me. He didn’t even try.
“This will be painless, Stirling,” I whispered. I sank my teeth cleanly, and the blood filled my mouth very slowly, and with it there came the sudden course of his life and dreams.
Innocent. The word burned through the pleasure. In a luminous drift of figures and voices he emerged, pushing his way through the crowd; Stirling, the man, pleading with me in my mental vision, saying Innocent. There I was, the boy of that old time, and Stirling saying Innocent. I couldn’t stop what had begun.
It was someone else who did that for me.
I felt an iron grip on my shoulder and I was whipped back away from Stirling, and Stirling staggered, almost falling, and then he tripped and sank down sideways into a chair at the desk.
I was slammed against the bookcase. I lapped at the blood on my lip and I tried to fight the dizziness. The chandelier appeared to be rocking, and the colors of the paintings on the wall were afire.
A firm hand was placed against my chest to steady me and to hold me back.
And then I realized I was looking at Lestat.
3
QUICKLY I REGAINED my balance. His eyes were on me and I didn’t have the slightest intention of looking away. Nevertheless, I looked him up and down because I couldn’t help it, and because he was as breathtaking as he has always described himself to be, and I had to see him, truly see him, even if he was to be the last thing I ever saw.
His skin was a pale golden that offset his violet blue eyes wonderfully, and his hair was a true mane of yellow, tousled and curling just above his shoulders. His colored glasses, almost the same violet tint as his eyes, were pushed up into his hair, and he was staring at me, golden eyebrows scowling slightly, waiting perhaps for me to regain my senses; I honestly didn’t know.
Quickly I realized he was wearing the black velvet jacket with the cameo buttons that had been his costume in the Chronicle called Merrick, each little cameo almost certainly of sardonyx, the coat itself very fancy with its pinched waist and flaring skirt. His linen shirt was open at the throat; his gray pants weren’t important and neither were his black boots.
What engraved itself into my consciousness was his face—square and taut, the eyes very big and the well-shaped mouth voluptuous, and the jaw somewhat hard, the whole more truly well proportioned and appealing than he could ever have claimed.
In fact, his own descriptions of himself didn’t do him justice because his looks, though certainly a handful of obvious blessings, were ignited by a potent inner fire.
He wasn’t staring at me with hatred. He wasn’t steadying me anymore with his hand.
I cursed myself, from the pit of my heart, that I was taller than he was, that he was in fact looking up at me. Maybe he’d cheerfully obliterate me on that account alone.
“The letter,” I stammered. “The letter!” I whispered, but though my hand groped, and my mind groped, I couldn’t reach inside my coat for the letter. I was wobbling in fear.
And as I stood there shivering and sweating, he reached inside my jacket and withdrew the envelope. Flash of sparkling fingernails.
“This is for me, is it, Tarquin Blackwood?” he asked. His voice had a touch of the French accent, no more. He