The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [140]
IT WAS A WEEK before we accompanied Madeleine on her errand, to torch a universe of dolls behind a plate-glass window. I remember wandering up the street away from it, round a turn into a narrow cavern of darkness where the falling rain was the only sound. But then I saw the red glare against the clouds. Bells clanged and men shouted, and Claudia beside me was talking softly of the nature of fire. The thick smoke rising in that flickering glare unnerved me. I was feeling fear. Not a wild, mortal fear, but something cold like a hook in my side. This fear—it was the old town house burning in the Rue Royale, Lestat in the attitude of sleep on the burning floor.
“ ‘Fire purifies …’ Claudia said. And I said, ‘No, fire merely destroys.…’
“Madeleine had gone past us and was roaming at the top of the street, a phantom in the rain, her white hands whipping the air, beckoning to us, white arcs of white fireflies. And I remember Claudia leaving me for her. The sight of wilted, writhing yellow hair as she told me to follow. A ribbon fallen underfoot, flapping and floating in a swirl of black water. It seemed they were gone. And I bent to retrieve that ribbon. But another hand reached out for it. It was Armand who gave it to me now.
“I was shocked to see him there, so near, the figure of Gentleman Death in a doorway, marvellously real in his black cape and silk tie, yet ethereal as the shadows in his stillness. There was the faintest glimmer of the fire in his eyes, red warming the blackness there to the richer brown.
“And I woke suddenly as if I’d been dreaming, woke to the sense of him, to his hand enclosing mine, to his head inclined as if to let me know he wanted me to follow—awoke to my own excited experience of his presence, which consumed me as surely as it had consumed me in his cell. We were walking together now, fast, nearing the Seine, moving so swiftly and artfully through a gathering of men that they scarce saw us, that we scarce saw them. That I could keep up with him easily amazed me. He was forcing me into some acknowledgment of my powers, that the paths I’d normally chosen were human paths I no longer need follow.
“I wanted desperately to talk to him, to stop him with both my hands on his shoulders, merely to look into his eyes again as I’d done that last night, to fix him in some time and place, so that I could deal with the excitement inside me. There was so much I wanted to tell him, so much I wanted to explain. And yet I didn’t know what to say or why I would say it, only that the fullness of the feeling continued to relieve me almost to tears. This was what I’d feared lost.
“I didn’t know where we were now, only that in my wanderings I’d passed here before: a street of ancient mansions, of garden walls and carriage doors and towers overhead and windows of leaded glass beneath stone arches. Houses of other centuries, gnarled trees, that sudden thick and silent tranquillity which means that the masses are shut out; a handful of mortals inhabit this vast region of high-ceilinged rooms; stone absorbs the sound of breathing, the space of whole lives.
“Armand was atop a wall now, his arm against the overhanging bough of a tree, his hand reaching for me; and in an instant I stood beside him, the wet foliage brushing my face. Above, I could see story after story rising to a lone tower that barely emerged from the dark, teeming rain. ‘Listen to me; we are going to climb to the tower,’ Armand was saying.
“ ‘I cannot … it’s impossible … !’
“ ‘You don’t begin to know your own powers.