The queen of the damned - Anne Rice [59]
Someone touched him. He turned so quickly he almost lost his balance. Why, this was all so inconceivably different! He steadied himself, but the sight of Armand made him want to cry. Even in deep shadow, Armand’s dark brown eyes were filled with a vibrant light. And the expression on his face, so loving. He reached out very carefully and touched Armand’s eyelashes. He wanted to touch the tiny fine lines in Armand’s lips. Armand kissed him. He began to tremble. The way it felt, the cool silky mouth, like a kiss of the brain, the electric purity of a thought!
“Come inside, my pupil,” Armand said. “We have less than an hour left.”
“But the others—”
Armand had gone to discover something very important. What was it? Terrible things happening, coven houses burned. Yet nothing at the moment seemed more important than the warmth inside him, and the tingling as he moved his limbs.
“They’re thriving, plotting,” Armand said. Was he speaking out loud? He must have been. But the voice was so clear! “They’re frightened of the wholesale destruction, but San Francisco isn’t touched. Some say Lestat has done it to drive everyone to him. Others that it’s the work of Marius, or even the twins. Or Those Who Must Be Kept, who strike with infinite power from their shrine.”
The twins! He felt the darkness of the dream again around him, a woman’s body, tongueless, terror, closing him in. Ah, nothing could hurt him now. Not dreams or plots. He was Armand’s child.
“But these things must wait,” Armand said gently. “You must come and do as I tell you. We must finish what was begun.”
“Finish?” It was finished. He was reborn.
Armand brought him in out of the wind. Glint of the brass bed in the darkness, of a porcelain vase alive with gilded dragons. Of the square grand piano with its keys like grinning teeth. Yes, touch it, feel the ivory, the velvet tassels hanging from the lampshade. . . .
The music, where did the music come from? A low, mournful jazz trumpet, playing all alone. It stopped him, this hollow melancholy song, the notes flowing slowly into one another. He did not want to move just now. He wanted to say he understood what was happening, but he was absorbing each broken sound.
He started to say thank you for the music, but again, his voice sounded so unaccountably strange—sharper, yet more resonant. Even the feel of his tongue, and out there, the fog, look at it, he pointed, the fog blowing right past the terrace, the fog eating the night!
Armand was patient. Armand understood. Armand brought him slowly through the darkened room.
“I love you,” Daniel said.
“Are you certain?” Armand answered.
It made him laugh.
They had come into a long high hallway. A stairs descending in deep shadow. A polished balustrade. Armand urged him forward. He wanted to look at the rug beneath him, a long chain of medallions woven with lilies, but Armand had brought him into a brightly lighted room.
He caught his breath at the sheer flood of illumination, light moving over the low-slung leather couches, chairs. Ah, but the painting on the wall!
So vivid the figures in the painting, formless creatures who were actually great thick smears of glaring yellow and red paint. Everything that looked alive was alive, that was a distinct possibility. You painted armless beings, swimming in blinding color, and they had to exist like that forever. Could they see you with all those tiny, scattered eyes? Or did they see only the heaven and hell of their own shining realm, anchored to the studs in the wall by a piece of twisted wire?
He could have wept to think of it, wept at the deep-throated moan of the trumpet—and yet he wasn’t weeping. He had caught a strong seductive aroma. God, what is it? His whole body seemed to harden inexplicably. Then suddenly he was staring at a young girl.
She sat in a small