Merrick - Anne Rice [39]
As for Lestat’s mother, Gabrielle, one of the coldest and most fascinating individuals whom I have ever encountered, it was of absolutely no concern to her at all, as long as no one harmed her son.
Well, it was quite impossible for anyone to harm her son. He is unharmable, as far as we all know. Or rather, to speak more plainly, let me say that his own adventures have harmed Lestat far more than any vampire might. His trip to Heaven and Hell with Memnoch, be it delusion or supernatural journey, has left him stunned spiritually to such a point that he is not ready to resume his antics and become the Brat Prince whom we once adored.
However, with vicious and sordid blood drinkers breaking down the very doors of St. Elizabeth’s and coming up the iron stairs of our very own town house in the Rue Royale, it was Armand who was able to rouse Lestat and goad him into taking the situation in hand.
Lestat, having already waked to listen to the piano music of a fledgling vampire, blamed himself for the tawdry invasion. It was he who had created the “Coven of the Articulate,” as we had come to be called. And so, he declared to us in a hushed voice, with little or no enthusiasm for the battle, that he would put things right.
Armand—given in the past to leading covens, and to destroying them—assisted Lestat in a massacre of the unwelcome rogue vampires before the social fabric was fatally breached.
Having the gift of fire, as the others called it—that is, the means to kindle a blaze telekinetically—Lestat destroyed with flames the brash invaders of his own lair, and all those who had violated the privacy of the more retiring Marius and Pandora, Santino, and Louis and myself. Armand dismembered and obliterated those who died at his hand.
Those few preternatural beings who weren’t killed fled the city, and indeed many were overtaken by Armand, who showed no mercy what soever to the misbegotten, the heartlessly careless, and the deliberately cruel.
After that, when it was plain to one and all that Lestat had returned to his semi-sleep, absorbed utterly in recordings of the finest music provided for him by me and by Louis, the elders—Marius, Pandora, Santino, and Armand, with two younger companions—gradually went their way.
It was an inevitable thing, that parting, because none of us could really endure the company of so many fellow blood drinkers for very long.
As it is with God and Satan, humankind is our subject matter. And so it is that, deep within the mortal world and its many complexities, we choose to spend our time.
Of course, we will all come together at various times in the future. We know well how to reach one another. We are not above writing letters. Or other means of communication. The eldest know telepathically when things have gone terribly wrong with the young ones, and vice versa. But for now, only Louis and Lestat and I hunt the streets of New Orleans, and so it will be for some time.
That means, strictly speaking, that only Louis and I hunt, for Lestat simply does not feed at all. Having the body of a god, he has subsumed the lust which still plagues the most powerful, and lies in his torpor as the music plays on.
And so New Orleans, in all her drowsy beauty, is host to only two of the Undead. Nevertheless, we must be very clever. We must cover up the deeds that we do. To feed upon the evildoer, as Marius has always called it, is our vow; however, the blood thirst is a terrible thing.
But before I return to my tale—of how Louis and I went out on this particular evening, allow me a few more words about Lestat.
I personally do not think that things are as simple with him as the others tend to believe. Above, I have given you pretty much “the party line,” as the expression goes, as to his coma-like slumber and his music. But there are very troubling aspects to his presence which