Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [237]
You know of what happened then. We gathered at our great table in the redwood trees—as if we were a new and passionate Faithful of the Forest—and when the Queen came to us with her plan to bring harm to the great world, we all sought to reason with her.
It was her dream to be the Queen of Heaven to humankind, to slay male children by the billions, and make the world a “garden” of tender-spirited women. It was a horrific and impossible conception.
No one sought more diligently than your red-haired Maker Maharet to turn her from her goals, condemning her that she would dare to change the course of human history.
I myself, thinking bitterly of the beautiful gardens I’d seen when I had drunk her blood, risked her deadly power over and over by pleading with her to give the world time to follow its own destiny.
Oh, it was a chilling thing to see this living statue now speaking to me so coldly yet with such strong will and contemptuous temper. How grand and evil were her schemes, to slay male children, to gather women in a superstitious worship.
What gave us courage to fight her? I don’t know except that we knew that we had to do it. And all along, as she threatened us repeatedly with death, I thought: I could have prevented this, I could have stopped it from ever happening had I put an end to her and to all of us.
As it is, she will destroy us and go on; and who will prevent her?
At one point she knocked me backwards with her arm, so quick was her rage at my words. And it was Santino who came to my assistance. I hated him for this but there was no time for hating him or anyone.
At last she laid her condemnation down on all of us. As we would not side with her, we would be destroyed, one after another. She would begin with Lestat, for she took his insult to her to be the greatest. And he had resisted her. Bravely he had sided with us, pleading with her for reason.
At this dreadful moment, the elders rose, the ones of the First Brood who had been made blood drinkers within her very lifetime, and those Children of the Millennia such as Pandora and myself and Mael and others.
But before the murderous little struggle could begin, there came another into our midst, approaching loudly up the iron steps of the forest compound where we met, until in the doorway we beheld the twin of Maharet: her mute sister, the sister from whom Akasha had torn the tongue: Mekare.
It was she who, snatching the long black hair of the Queen, bashed her head against the glass wall, breaking it, and severing the head from the body. It was she and her sister who dropped down on their knees, to retrieve from the decapitated Queen, the Sacred Core of all the vampires.
Whether that Sacred Core—that fatal root—was imbibed from heart or brain, I know not. I know only that the mute Mekare became its new tabernacle.
And after a few moments of sputtering darkness in which we all of us wondered whether or not death should take us now, we regained our strength and looked up to see the twins standing before us.
Maharet put her arm around Mekare’s waist, and Mekare, come from brutal isolation I know not where, merely stared into space as though she knew some quiet peace but no more than that. And from Maharet’s lips there came the words:
“Behold. The Queen of the Damned.”
It was finished.
The reign of my beloved Akasha—with all its hopes and dreams—had come abruptly to an end.
And I carried through the world the burden of Those Who Must Be Kept no longer.
The End of the Story of Marius
THE LISTENER
36
Marius stood at the glass window looking out at the snow. Thorne sat by the dying fire, merely looking at Marius.
“So you have woven for me a long, fine tale,” said Thorne, “and I have found myself marvelously caught up in it.”
“Have you?” said Marius quietly. “And perhaps I now find myself woven within my hatred of Santino.”
“But Pandora was with you,” said Thorne. “You were reunited with her again. Why is she not with you now? What’s happened?”
“I was united with Pandora and Amadeo,”