Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [94]
A great desperate sigh came out of me. Ah, so be it!
And I watched in quiet horror as Eudoxia became the Mother’s victim, Eudoxia’s arms flailing hopelessly, her knees pushing against the Mother, until finally the limp body of Eudoxia was allowed to slip from the Mother’s embrace.
Once fallen onto the marble floor, it looked like an exquisite doll of white wax. No audible breath came from it. Its round dark eyes did not move.
But it wasn’t dead, no, not by any means. It was a blood drinker’s body with a blood drinker’s soul. Only fire could kill it. I waited, keeping my own powers in check.
Long ago, in Antioch, when unwelcome vampires had assaulted the Mother, she had used the Mind Gift to lift a lamp to burn their remains with fire and oil. So she had done with the remains of the Elder in Egypt, as I have already described. Would she do this now?
Something simpler happened.
Quite suddenly I saw flames erupt from Eudoxia’s breast, and then flames run riot through her veins. Her face remained sweet and unfeeling. Her eyes remained empty. Her limbs twitched.
It was not my Fire Gift that had brought about this execution. It was the power of Akasha. What else could it have been? A new power, lain dormant in her for centuries, now known to her on account of Eudoxia and me?
I dared not guess. I dared not question.
At once the flames rising from the highly combustible blood of the preternatural body ignited the heavy ornate garments and the whole form was ablaze.
Only after a long time did the fire die away, leaving a glittering mass of ash.
The clever learned creature who had been Eudoxia was no more. The brilliant charming creature who had lived so well and so long was no more. The being who had given me such hope when first I saw her and heard her voice was no more.
I took off my outer cloak and, going down on my knees like a poor scrubwoman, I wiped up this pollution of the shrine and then I sat down exhausted in the corner, my head against the wall. And to my own surprise, and who knows?—perhaps to the surprise of the Mother and Father—I gave way to tears.
I wept and wept for Eudoxia, and also for myself that I had brutally burnt those young blood drinkers, those foolish unschooled and undisciplined immortals who had been Born to Darkness as we say now, only to be pawns in a brawl.
I felt a cruelty in myself which I could only abhor.
Finally, being quite satisfied that my underground crypt remained impregnable—for looters were now thick in the ruins above—I laid down for the sleep of the day.
I knew what I meant to do the following night and nothing could change my mind.
12
In the tavern, I met with Avicus and Mael the following night. They were filled with fear and they listened with wide eyes as I told them the tale.
Avicus was crushed by this knowledge, but not Mael.
“To destroy her,” said Avicus, “why did it have to be done?”
He felt no false manly need to disguise his grief and sadness and was weeping at once.
“You know why,” said Mael. “There would have been no stop to her enmity. Marius knew this. Don’t torment him now with questions. It had to be done.”
I could say nothing, for I had too many doubts as to what I’d done. It had been so absolute and so sudden. I felt a tightening of my heart and chest when I thought about it, a sort of panic which resides in the body rather than the brain.
I sat back, observing my two companions and thinking hard on what their affection had meant to me. It had been sweet and I did not want to leave them, but that was precisely what I intended to do.
Finally after they had quietly quarreled for some time, I gestured for silence. On the matter of Eudoxia I had only a few things to say.
“It was my anger which required it,” I said, “for what other part of me, except my anger, had received the insult of what she had done to us through the destruction of our house? I don’t regret that she is gone; no, I cannot. And as I’ve told you, it was only done by means of an offering to the Mother,