Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [194]
I removed my leather mask and laid it aside. I was as hideous now as those old burnt gods whom Akasha had once crushed when they came to her. Would she refuse me in the same manner? Or had she known all along what had befallen me? Had she understood completely all things before the door was ever opened?
I rose slowly until I knelt at her feet and I could put my hand upon her throat, all the while tensed for the threat of Enkil’s arm, but it did not come.
I kissed her throat, feeling her plaited hair against me and looking at her white skin before me, and hearing only Bianca’s soft tears.
“Don’t cry, Bianca,” I whispered.
Then I sank my teeth suddenly, viciously, as I had so often done, and the thick blood flooded into me, brilliant and hot as the lamplight and the light of the candles, pouring into me as if her heart were pumping it willingly into me, racing the beat of my own heart. My head grew light. My body grew light.
Far away Bianca wept. Why was she afraid?
I saw the garden. I saw the garden I had painted after I had fallen in love with Botticelli, and it was filled with his orange trees and with his flowers and yet it was my garden, the garden of my father’s house outside Rome long long ago. How could I ever forget my own garden? How could I ever forget the garden where I had first played as a child?
In memory I went back to those days in Rome when I had been mortal, and there was my garden, the garden of the villa of my father, and I was walking in the soft grass and listening to the sound of the fountain, and then it seemed that all through time, the garden changed but never changed, and it was always there for me.
I lay down on the grass, and the branches of the trees moved above me. I heard a voice speaking to me, rapidly and sweetly, but I didn’t know what it was saying, and then I knew that Amadeo was hurt, that he was in the hands of those who would bring pain and evil to him, and that I could not go to him now, I would only stumble into their snares if I did, and that I must stay here.
I was the Keeper of the King and the Queen as I had told Bianca, yes, the Keeper of the King and the Queen, and I must let Amadeo go in Time, and perhaps were I to do as I should, perhaps Pandora would be returned to me, Pandora who traveled the northern cities of Europe now, Pandora who had been seen.
The garden was verdant and fragrant and I saw Pandora clearly. I saw her in her soft white dress, her hair loose as I had described it to Bianca. Pandora smiled. She walked towards me. She spoke to me. The Queen wants us to be together, she said. Her eyes were large and wondering and I knew she was very close to me, very close, so close that I could almost touch her hand.
I can’t be imagining this, no, I cannot, I thought. And there came back to me again vividly the sound of Pandora’s voice, as she quarreled with me on our first night as bride and groom: Even as this new blood races through me still, eats at me and transforms me, I cling to neither reason nor superstition for my safety. I can walk through a myth and out of it! You fear me, because you don’t know what I am. I look like a woman, I sound like a man, and your reason tells you the sum total is impossible.
I was looking into Pandora’s eyes. She sat on the garden bench, pulling the flower petals out of her brown hair, a girl again in the Blood, a woman-girl forever, as Bianca would be a young woman forever.
I reached out on either side of me and felt the grass beneath my hands.
Suddenly I fell backwards, out of the dream garden, out of the illusion and found myself lying quite still on the floor of the chapel, between the high bank of perfect candles, and the steps of the dais where the enthroned couple