The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [127]
“ ‘Did you kill this vampire who made you? Is that why you are here without him, why you won’t say his name? Santiago thinks that you did.’
“ ‘And if this is true, or if we can’t convince you otherwise, you would try to destroy us?’ I asked.
“ ‘I would not try to do anything to you,’ he said, calmly. ‘But as I told you, I am not the leader here in the sense that you asked.’
“ ‘Yet they believe you to be the leader, don’t they? And Santiago, you shoved him away from me twice.’
“ ‘I’m more powerful than Santiago, older. Santiago is younger than you are,’ he said. His voice was simple, devoid of pride. These were facts.
“ ‘We want no quarrel with you.’
“ ‘It’s begun,’ he said. ‘But not with me. With those above.’ ” ‘But what reason has he to suspect us?’
“He seemed to be thinking now, his eyes cast down, his chin resting on his closed fist. After a while which seemed interminable, he looked up. ‘I could give you reasons,’ he said. ‘That you are too silent. That the vampires of the world are a small number and live in terror of strife amongst themselves and choose their fledglings with great care, making certain that they respect the other vampires mightily. There are fifteen vampires in this house, and the number is jealously guarded. And weak vampires are feared; I should say this also. That you are flawed is obvious to them: you feel too much, you think too much. As you said yourself, vampire detachment is not of great value to you. And then there is this mysterious child: a child who can never grow, never be self-sufficient. I would not make a vampire of that boy there now if his life, which is so precious to me, were in serious danger, because he is too young, his limbs not strong enough, his mortal cup barely tasted: yet you bring with you this child. What manner of vampire made her, they ask; did you make her? So, you see, you bring with you these flaws and this mystery and yet you are completely silent. And so you cannot be trusted. And Santiago looks for an excuse. But there is another reason closer to the truth than all those things which I’ve just said to you. And that is simply this: that when you first encountered Santiago in the Latin Quarter you … unfortunately … called him a buffoon.’
“ ‘Aaaaah.’ I sat back.
“ ‘It would perhaps have been better all around if you had said nothing.’ And he smiled to see that I understood with him the irony of this.
“I sat reflecting upon what he’d said, and what weighed as heavily upon me through all of it were Claudia’s strange admonitions, that this gentle-eyed young man had said to her, ‘Die,’ and beyond that my slowly accumulating disgust with the vampires in the ballroom above.
“I felt an overwhelming desire to speak to him of these things. Of her fear, no, not yet, though I couldn’t believe when I looked into his eyes that he’d tried to wield this power over her: his eyes said, Live. His eyes said, Learn. And oh, how much I wanted to confide to him the breadth of what I didn’t understand; how, searching all these years, I’d been astonished to discover those vampires above had made of immortality a club of fads and cheap conformity. And yet through this sadness, this confusion, came the clear realization: Why should it be otherwise? What had I expected? What right had I to be so bitterly disappointed in Lestat that I would let him die! Because he wouldn’t show me what I must find in myself? Armand’s words, what had they been? The only power that exists is inside ourselves.…
“ ‘Listen to me,’ he said now. ‘You must stay away from them. Your face hides nothing. You would yield to me now were I to question you. Look into my eyes.’
“I didn’t do this. I fixed my eyes firmly on one of those small paintings above his desk until it ceased to be the Madonna and Child and became a harmony of line and color. Because I knew what he was saying to me was true.
“ ‘Stop them if you will, advise