The queen of the damned - Anne Rice [152]
“You dare to come into my temple!” he said, and again the language itself eluded me but the meaning was telepathically clear.
“You will die now!” Akasha said, the voice even softer than it had been a moment ago. “You who have misled these hopeless innocents; you who have fed upon their lives and their blood like a bloated leech.”
Screams rose from the worshipers, cries for mercy. Again, Azim told them to be quiet.
“What right have you to condemn my worship,” he cried, pointing his finger at us, “you who have sat silent on your throne since the beginning of time!”
“Time did not begin with you, my cursed beauty,” Akasha answered. “I was old when you were born. And I am risen now to rule as I was meant to rule. And you shall die as a lesson to your people. You are my first great martyr. You shall die now!”
He tried to run at her, and I tried to step between them; but it was all too fast to be seen. She caught him by some invisible means and shoved him backwards so that his feet slid across the marble tile and he teetered, almost falling and then dancing as he sought to right himself, his eyes rolling up into his head.
A deep gurgling cry came out of him. He was burning. His garments were burning; and then the smoke rose from him gray and thin and writhing in the gloom as the terrified crowd gave way to screams and wails. He was twisting as the heat consumed him; then suddenly, bent double, he rose, staring at her, and flew at her with his arms out.
It seemed he would reach her before she thought what to do. And again, I tried to step before her, and with a quick shove of her right hand she threw me back into the human swarm. There were half-naked bodies all around, struggling to get away from me as I caught my balance.
I spun around and saw him poised not three feet from her, snarling at her, and trying to reach her over some invisible and unsurmountable force.
“Die, damnable one!” she cried out. (I clamped my hands over my ears.) “Go into the pit of perdition. I create it for you now.”
Azim’s head exploded. Smoke and flame poured out of his ruptured skull. His eyes turned black. With a flash, his entire frame ignited; yet he went down in a human posture, his fist raised against her, his legs curling as if he meant to try to stand again. Then his form disappeared utterly in a great orange blaze.
Panic descended upon the crowd, just as it had upon the rock fans outside the concert hall when the fires had broken out and Gabrielle and Louis and I had made our escape.
Yet it seemed the hysteria here reached a more dangerous pitch. Bodies crashed against the slender marble pillars. Men and women were crushed instantly as others rushed over them to the doors.
Akasha turned full circle, her garments caught in a brief dance of black and white silk around her; and everywhere human beings were caught as if by invisible hands and flung to the floor. Their bodies went into convulsions. The women, looking down at the stricken victims, wailed and tore their hair.
It took me a moment to realize what was happening, that she was killing the men. It wasn’t fire. It was some invisible attack upon the vital organs. Blood poured from their ears and their eyes as they expired. Enraged, several of the women ran at her, only to meet the same fate. The men who attacked her were vanquished instantly.
Then I heard her voice inside my head:
Kill them, Lestat. Slaughter the males to the last one.
I was paralyzed. I stood beside her, lest one of them get close to her. But they didn’t have a chance. This was beyond nightmare, beyond the stupid horrors to which I’d been a party all of my accursed life.
Suddenly she was standing in front of me, grasping my arms. Her soft icy voice had become an engulfing sound in my brain.