Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [193]
I found myself staring over the row of one hundred candles up into the faces of the Divine Mother and Father, seeing them as perhaps Bianca would see them, and certainly with refreshed and grateful eyes.
I knelt down, and Bianca knelt at my side. I was trembling. Indeed my shock was so great that I could not for a moment fill my lungs with air. There was no way that I could explain to Bianca the full import of what had taken place. I would only frighten her if I tried to do so. And careless words spoken before my Queen would be unforgivable.
“Don’t speak,” I finally said in a whisper. “They are our Parents. They have opened the door, when I could not. They have lighted the lamps for us. They have lighted the candles. You cannot imagine the worth of this blessing. They have welcomed us inside. We can answer them only with prayers.”
Bianca nodded. Her face was full of piety and wonder. Did it matter to Akasha that I had brought to her feet an exquisite blood drinker?
In a low reverent voice I recounted the story of the Divine Parents but only in the simplest and grandest terms. I told Bianca how they had come to be the very first blood drinkers thousands of years ago in Egypt, and that now they no longer hungered for blood or even so much as spoke or moved. I was their keeper and their guardian and had been so for all of my life as a blood drinker and so it would always be.
I said these things so that nothing would alarm Bianca and she would feel no dread of the two still figures who stared forward in horrifying silence, and did not seem even to blink. And so it was that tender Bianca was initiated into these powerful mysteries with great care and thought them beautiful and nothing more.
“It was to this chapel,” I explained, “that I would come when I left Venice, and I would light the lamps for the King and the Queen, and bring fresh flowers. You see, there are none now. But I will bring them when I can.”
Once again, I realized that in spite of my enthusiasm and gratitude, I couldn’t really make her know what a miracle it was that Akasha had opened the door for us, or lighted the lamps. Indeed, I didn’t dare to do it, and now that I had finished this respectful recital, I closed my eyes, and in silence I thanked both Akasha and Enkil that they had admitted me to the sanctuary, and that they had greeted us with the gift of light.
Over and over I offered my prayers, perhaps unable myself to grasp the fact that they had so welcomed me, and not too certain of what it really meant. Was I loved? Was I needed? It seemed I must accept without presumption. It seemed I must be grateful without imagining things that weren’t so.
I knelt in quietude for a long time and Bianca must surely have observed me for she too was quiet, and then I could bear the thirst no longer. I stared at Akasha. I desired the Blood. I could think of nothing but the Blood. All my injuries were as so many open wounds in me. And my wounds bled for the Blood. I had to attempt to take the all-powerful Blood from the Queen.
“My beauty,” I said, placing my gloved hand on Bianca’s tender arm. “I want you to go to the corner there and to sit quiet, and to say nothing of what you see.”
“But what will happen?” she whispered. For the first time she sounded afraid. She looked about herself at the shivering flames of the lamps, at the glowing candles, at the painted walls.
“Do as I tell you,” I said. I had to say it, and she had to do it, for how was I ever to know whether the Queen would let me drink?
As soon as Bianca was in the corner with her heavy cloak wrapped around her and as far away as possible, for whatever good it would do, I prayed in silence for the Blood.
“You see me and what