The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [287]
And it was Gabrielle who, after studying him quietly for hours, took him in hand, cleaning him and putting new clothes on him. Black wool she chose, one of the few somber coats I owned. And modest linen that made him look oddly like a young cleric, a little too serious, a little naive.
And in the silence of the crypt as I watched them, I knew without doubt that they could hear each other’s thoughts. Without a word she guided him through the grooming. Without a word she sent him back to the bench by the fire.
Finally, she said, “He should hunt now,” and when she glanced at him, he rose without looking at her as if pulled by a string.
Numbly I watched them going. Heard their feet on the stairs. And then I crept up after them, stealthily, and holding to the bars of the gate I watched them move, two feline spirits, across the field.
The emptiness of the night was an indissoluble cold settling over me, closing me in. Not even the fire on the hearth warmed me when I returned to it.
Emptiness here. And the quiet I had told myself that I wanted—just to be alone after the grisly struggle in Paris. Quiet, and the realization, which I could not bring myself to confess to her, the realization gnawing at my insides like a starved animal—that I couldn’t stand the sight of him now.
5
HEN I opened my eyes the next night, I knew what I meant to do. Whether or not I could stand to look at him wasn’t important. I had made him this, and I had to rouse him from his stupor somehow.
The hunt hadn’t changed him, though apparently he’d drunk and killed well enough. And now it was up to me to protect him from the revulsion I felt, and to go into Paris and get the one thing that might bring him around.
The violin was all he’d ever loved when he was alive. Maybe now it would awaken him. I’d put it in his hands, and he’d want to play it again, he’d want to play it with his new skill, and everything would change and the chill in my heart would somehow melt.
AS SOON as Gabrielle rose I told her what I meant to do.
“But what about the others?” she said. “You can’t go riding into Paris alone.”
“Yes, I can,” I said. “You’re needed here with him. If the little pests should come round, they could lure him into the open, the way he is now. And besides, I want to know what’s happening under les Innocents. If we have a real truce, I want to know.”
“I don’t like your going,” she said, shaking her head. “I tell you, if I didn’t believe we should speak to the leader again, that we had things to learn from him and the old woman, I’d be for leaving Paris tonight.”
“And what could they possibly teach us?” I said coldly. “That the sun really revolves around the earth? That the earth is flat?” But the bitterness of my words made me feel ashamed.
One thing they could tell me was why the vampires I’d made could hear each other’s thoughts when I could not. But I was too crestfallen over my loathing of Nicki to think of all these things.
I only looked at her and thought how glorious it had been to see the Dark Trick work its magic in her, to see it restore her youthful beauty, render her again the goddess she’d been to me when I was a little child. To see Nicki change had been to see him die.
Maybe without reading the words in my soul she understood it only too well.
We embraced slowly. “Be careful,” she said.
• • •
I SHOULD have gone to the flat right away to look for his violin. And there was still my poor Roget to deal with. Lies to tell. And this matter of getting out of Paris—it seemed more and more the thing for us to do.
But for hours I did just what I wanted. I hunted the Tuileries and the boulevards, pretending there was no coven under les Innocents, that Nicki was alive still and safe somewhere, that Paris was all mine again.
But I was listening for them every moment. I was thinking about the old queen. And I heard