The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [291]
But his manner wasn’t the entire horror. It was the havoc he was leaving behind him, the utter disregard of everything he used.
And his utter disregard of me.
He finished his latest book, or broke off from it, and went to the old newspapers stacked on a lower shelf.
I found myself backing out of the room and away from him, staring numbly at his small dirty figure. His auburn hair shimmered despite the dirt in it; his eyes burned like two lights.
Grotesque he seemed, among all the candles and the swimming colors of the flat, this filthy waif of the netherworld, and yet his beauty held sway. He hadn’t needed the shadows of Notre Dame or the torchlight of the crypt to flatter him. And there was a fierceness in him in this bright light that I hadn’t seen before.
I felt an overwhelming confusion. He was both dangerous and compelling. I could have looked on him forever, but an overpowering instinct said: Get away. Leave the place to him if he wants it. What does it matter now?
The violin. I tried desperately to think about the violin. To stop watching the movement of his hands over the words in front of him, the relentless focus of his eyes.
But these things were putting me in a trance.
I turned my back on him and went into the parlor. My hands were trembling. I could hardly endure knowing he was there. I searched everywhere and didn’t find the damned violin. What could Nicki have done with it? I couldn’t think.
Pages turning, paper crinkling. Soft sound of the newspaper dropping to the floor.
Go back to the tower at once.
I went to pass the library quickly, when without warning his soundless voice shot out and stopped me. It was like a hand touching my throat. I turned and saw him staring at me.
Do you love them, your silent children? Do they love you? That was what he asked, the sense disentangling itself from an endless echo.
I felt the blood rise to my face. The heat spread out over me like a mask as I looked at him.
All the books in the room were now on the floor. He was a haunt standing in the ruins, a visitant from the devil he believed in. Yet his face was so tender, so young.
The Dark Trick never brings love, you see, it brings only the silence. His voice seemed softer in its soundlessness, clearer, the echo dissipated. We used to say it was Satan’s will, that the master and the fledgling not seek comfort in each other. It was Satan who had to be served, after all.
Every word penetrated me. Every word was received by a secret, humiliating curiosity and vulnerability. But I refused to let him see this. Angrily I said:
“What do you want of me?”
It was shattering something to speak. I was feeling more fear of him at this moment than ever during the earlier battles and arguments, and I hate those who make me feel fear, those who know things that I need to know, who have that power over me.
“It is like not knowing how to read, isn’t it?” he said aloud. “And your maker, the outcast Magnus, what did he care for your ignorance? He did not tell you the simplest things, did he?”
Nothing in his expression moved as he spoke.
“Hasn’t it always been this way? Has anyone ever cared to teach you anything?”
“You’re taking these things from my mind …” I said. I was appalled. I saw the monastery where I’d been as a boy, the rows and rows of books that I could not read, Gabrielle bent over her books, her back to all of us. “Stop this!” I whispered.
It seemed the longest time had passed. I was becoming disoriented. He was speaking again, but in silence.
They never satisfy you, the ones you make. In silence the estrangement and the resentment only grow.
I willed myself to move but I wasn’t moving. I was merely looking at him as he went on.
You long for me and I for you, and we alone in all this realm are worthy of each other. Don’t you know this?
The toneless words seemed to be stretched, amplified, like a note on the violin drawn out forever and ever.
“This is madness,” I whispered. I thought of all the things he had said to me, what he had blamed me for, the horrors