Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [97]
“When?” I asked.
“When she had finished with you, when you were destroyed or driven away.” She looked up at me.
She was no more than an exquisite baby of a woman! I wanted so to kiss her cheeks. But her sorrow was terrible.
“She said it would be a battle,” she said, “that you were one of the strongest who had ever come here. The others had been simple. But with you, she wasn’t sure of the outcome, and so she had to hide me away.”
I nodded. I didn’t dare to touch her. But I felt nothing but a desire to protect her, to enfold her in my arms, to tell her that if she meant to pound her fists on my chest and curse me she should do it, that if she meant to weep she might do that as well.
“Why don’t you speak?” she asked me, her eyes full of hurt and wonder. “Why are you so quiet?”
I shook my head. “What can I say?” I asked. “It was a terrible quarrel. I didn’t want it. I thought that we could all exist here in peace.”
At this she smiled. “She would never have allowed that,” she said to me quickly. “If you knew how many she’s destroyed . . . but then I don’t know myself.”
This was a small comfort to my conscience, but I didn’t seize upon it. I let it go.
“She said that this city belonged to her, and that it took the power of an empress to protect it. She took me from the palace, where I was a slave. She brought me here by night and I was so frightened. But then I came to love her. She was so certain that I would. She told such stories of her wanderings. And then when others came, she would hide me, and she would go against them until the city was hers again.”
I nodded, listening to all this, sad for her and the drowsy sorrowful manner in which she spoke. It was no more than I’d supposed.
“How will you exist if I leave you here?” I asked.
“I can’t!” she answered. She looked into my eyes. “You can’t leave me. You must take care of me. I beg you. I don’t know what it means to exist alone.”
I cursed under my breath. She heard it, and I saw the pain in her expression.
I stood up and walked about the room. I looked back at her, this baby woman, with her tender mouth and her long loose black hair.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Zenobia,” she replied. “Why can’t you read it from my mind? She could always read my thoughts.”
“I could do it,” I said, “if I wanted to do it. But I would rather talk to you. Your beauty confuses me. I would rather hear your voice. Who made you a vampire?”
“One of her slaves,” she said. “The one named Asphar. He’s gone too, isn’t he?” she asked. “They’re all gone. I saw the ashes.” She gestured vaguely to the other rooms. She murmured a string of names.
“Yes,” I said, “they’re all dead.”
“You would have slain me too if I’d been here,” she said, with the same wondering and hurt-filled expression.
“Perhaps,” I said. “But it’s over now. It was a battle. And when a battle is finished, everything changes. Who else has been hidden away?”
“No one,” she answered truthfully, “only me, with one mortal slave, and when I woke tonight, he was gone.”
I must have looked very dejected for surely I felt that way.
She turned and with the slowness of a dazed person, reached under the heavy pillows at the head of the bed, and withdrew a dagger.
Then she rose and made her way to me. She held up the dagger with two hands, the tip pointed at my chest. She stared before her, but not into my eyes. Her long wavy black hair fell down around her on both sides of her face.
“I should take vengeance,” she said quietly, “but you will only stop me if I try.”
“Don’t try it,” I said in the same calm voice I had used for her all along. I pushed the dagger away gently. And putting my arm around her, I led her back to the bed.
“Why didn’t she give you the Blood?” I asked.
“Her blood was too strong for us. She told us so. All her blood drinker slaves were stolen or made one by another under her direction. She said that her blood was not to be shared. It would come with strength and silence. Make a blood drinker and you cannot ever