The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice [176]
I closed my eyes, taking with me to my heart an image of the room. I breathed in, lighting the scent of their blood, the sweet clean fragrance of the lilies. “Would you let me see those flowers?” I whispered. Were my lips charred? Could they see my fang teeth, and were they yellowed from the fire? I floated on the silks beneath me. I floated and it seemed that I could dream now, safe, truly safe. The lilies were close. I reached up again. I felt the petals against my hand, and the tears came down my face. Were they pure blood? Pray not, but I heard Benji’s frank little gasp, and Sybelle making her soft sound to hush him.
“I was a boy of seventeen, I think, when it happened,” I said. “It was hundreds of years ago. I was too young, really. My Master, he was a loving one; he didn’t believe we were evil things. He thought we could feed off the badlings. If I hadn’t been dying, it wouldn’t have been done so soon. He wanted me to know things, to be ready.”
I opened my eyes. They were spellbound! They saw again the boy I’d been. I had done it without intention.
“Oh, so handsome,” said Benji. “So fine, Dybbuk.”
“Little man,” I said with a sigh, feeling the fragile illusion about me crumble to air, “call me by my name from now on; it’s not Dybbuk. I think you picked up that one from the Hebrews of Palestine.”
He laughed. He didn’t flinch as I faded back into my horrid self.
“Then tell me your name,” he said.
I did.
“Armand,” said Sybelle. “Tell us, what can we do? If not silk scarves, ointments then, aloe, yes, aloe will heal your burns.”
I laughed but only in a small soft way, meant to be purely kindly.
“My aloe is blood, child. I need an evil man, a man who deserves to die. Now, how will I find him?”
“What will this blood do?” asked Benji. He sat right down beside me, leaning over me as though I were the most fascinating specimen. “You know, Armand, you are black as pitch, you are made out of black leather, you are like those people they fish from the bogs in Europe, all shiny with all of you sealed inside. I could take a lesson in muscles from looking at you.”
“Benji, stop,” said Sybelle, struggling with her disapproval and her alarm. “We have to think how to get an evil man.”
“You serious?” he said, looking up and across the bed at her. She stood with her hands clasped as if in prayer. “Sybelle, that’s nothing. It’s how to get rid of him afterwards that’s so hard.” He looked at me. “Do you know what we did with her brother?”
She put her hands over her ears and bowed her head. How many times had I done that very thing myself when it seemed a stream of words and images would utterly destroy me.
“You are so glossy, Armand,” said Benji. “But I can get you an evil man, like that, it’s nothing. You want an evil man? Let’s make a plan.” He bent down over me, as though trying to peer into my brain. I realized suddenly that he was looking at my fangs.
“Benji,” I said, “don’t come any closer. Sybelle, take him away.”
“But what did I do?”
“Nothing,” she said. She dropped her voice, and said desperately, “He’s hungry.”
“Lift the covers off again, will you do that?” I asked. “Lift them off and look at me and let me look into your eyes, and let that be my mirror. I want to see how very bad it is.”
“Hmmm, Armand,” said Benji. “I think you are crazy mad or something.”
Sybelle bent down and with her two careful hands peeled the cover back and down, exposing the length of my body.
I went into her mind.
It was worse than I had ever imagined.
The glossy horror of a bog corpse, as Benji had said, was perfectly true, save for the horror of the full head of red-brown hair and huge, lidless bright brown eyes, and the white teeth arrayed perfectly below and above lips that had shriveled to nothing. Down the tightly drawn wrinkled black leather of the face were heavy red streaks of blood that had been my tears.
I whipped my head to the side and deep into the downy pillow. I felt the covers come up over me.
“This cannot go on for you, even if it could go on for me,” I said. “It’s not what I would have you see another