The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [101]
“I could feel her watching my face, and I stood there, my arms folded, my back to the side of the window, looking out.
“ ‘That pale-faced Emily, that miserable Englishman …’ she said, oblivious to the flicker of pain in my face. ‘Their hearts were nothing, and it was the fear of death as much as the drawing of blood that killed them. The idea killed them. But what of the hearts that survive? Are you sure you haven’t fathered a league of monsters who, from time to time, struggled vainly and instinctively to follow in your footsteps? What was their life span, these orphans you left behind you—a day there, a week here, before the sun burnt them to ashes or some mortal victim cut them down?’
“ ‘Stop it,’ I begged her. ‘If you knew how completely I envision everything you describe, you would not describe it. I tell you it’s never happened! Lestat drained me to the point of death to make me a vampire. And gave back all that blood mingled with his own. That is how it was done!’
“She looked away from me, and then it seemed she was looking down at her hands. I think I heard her sigh, but I wasn’t certain. And then her eyes moved over me, slowly, up and down, before they finally met mine. Then it seemed she smiled. ‘Don’t be frightened of my fancy,’ she said softly. ‘After all, the final decision will always rest With you. Is that not so?’
“ ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. And a cold laughter erupted from her as she turned away.
“ ‘Can you picture it?’ she said, so softly I scarcely heard. ‘A coven of children? That is all I could provide.…’
“ ‘Claudia,’ I murmured.
“ ‘Rest easy,’ she said abruptly, her voice still low. ‘I tell you that as much as I hated Lestat …’ She stopped.
“ ‘Yes …’ I whispered. ‘Yes.…’
“ ‘As much as I hated him, with him we were … complete.’ She looked at me, her eyelids quivering, as if the slight rise in her voice had disturbed her even as it had disturbed me.
“ ‘No, only you were complete …’ I said to her. ‘Because there were two of us, one on either side of you, from the beginning.’
“I thought I saw her smile then, but I was not certain. She bowed her head, but I could see her eyes moving beneath the lashes, back and forth, back and forth. Then she said, ‘The two of you at my side. Do you picture that as you say it, as you picture everything else?’
“One night, long gone by, was as material to me as if I were in it still, but I didn’t tell her. She was desperate in that night, running away from Lestat, who had urged her to kill a woman in the street from whom she’d backed off, clearly alarmed. I was sure the woman had resembled her mother. Finally she’d escaped us entirely, but I’d found her in the armoire, beneath the jackets and coats, clinging to her doll. And, carrying her to her crib, I sat beside her and sang to her, and she stared at me as she clung to that doll, as if trying blindly and mysteriously to calm a pain she herself did not begin to understand. Can you picture it, this splendid domesticity, dim lamps, the vampire father singing to the vampire daughter? Only the doll had a human face, only the doll.
“ ‘But we must get away from here!’ said the present Claudia suddenly, as though the thought had just taken shape in her mind with a special urgency. She had her hand to her ear, as if clutching it against some awful sound. ‘From the roads behind us, from what I see in your eyes now, because I give voice to thoughts which are nothing more to me than plain considerations …’
“ ‘Forgive me,’ I said as gently as I could, withdrawing slowly from that long-ago room, that ruffled crib, that frightened monster child and monster voice. And Lestat, where was Lestat? A match striking in the other room, a shadow leaping suddenly into life, as light and dark come alive where there was only darkness.
“ ‘No, you forgive me …’ she was saying to me now, in this little hotel room near the first capital of western Europe. ‘No, we forgive each other. But we don’t forgive him; and, without him, you see what things are between us.’
“ ‘Only now because we are tired, and things are dreary …’ I said to