The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [293]
But I couldn’t shape the words now any more than I could before. And this time, I knew that if I dared to try, the bliss would melt and leave me and the anguish would be worse than the thirst for blood.
Yet even as I remained still, in the mystery of this feeling, I knew strange images and thoughts that weren’t my own.
I saw myself retreat again to the dungeon and lift up the inanimate bodies of those kindred monsters I loved. I saw myself carrying them up to the roof of the tower and leaving them there in their helplessness at the mercy of the rising sun. Hell’s Bells rang the alarm in vain for them. And the sun took them up and made them cinders with human hair.
My mind recoiled from this; it recoiled in the most heartbreaking disappointment.
“Child, still,” I whispered. Ah, the pain of this disappointment, the possibility diminishing … “How foolish you are to think that such things could be done by me.”
The voice faded; it withdrew itself from me. And I felt my aloneness in every pore of my skin. It was as if all covering had been taken from me forever and I would always be as naked and miserable as I was now.
And I felt far off a convulsion of power, as if the spirit that had made the voice was curling upon itself like a great tongue.
“Treachery!” I said louder. “But oh, the sadness of it, the miscalculation. How can you say that you desire me!”
Gone it was. Absolutely gone. And desperately, I wanted it back even if it was to fight with me. I wanted that sense of possibility, that lovely flare again.
And I saw his face in Notre Dame, boyish and almost sweet, like the face of an old da Vinci saint. A horrid sense of fatality passed over me.
6
S SOON as Gabrielle rose, I drew her away from Nicki, out into the quiet of the forest, and I told her all that had taken place the preceding night. I told her all that Armand had suggested and said. In an embarrassed way, I spoke of the silence that existed between her and me, and of how I knew now that it wasn’t to change.
“We should leave Paris as soon as possible,” I said finally. “This creature is too dangerous. And the ones to whom I gave the theater—they don’t know anything other than what they’ve been taught by him. I say let them have Paris. And let’s take the Devil’s Road, to use the old queen’s words.”
I had expected anger from her, and malice towards Armand. But through the whole story she remained calm.
“Lestat, there are too many unanswered questions,” she said. “I want to know how this old coven started, I want to know all that Armand knows about us.”
“Mother, I’m tempted to turn my back on it. I don’t care how it started. I wonder if he himself even knows.”
“I understand, Lestat,” she said quietly. “Believe me, I do. When all is said and done, I care less about these creatures than I do about the trees in this forest or the stars overhead. I’d rather study the currents of wind or the patterns in the falling leaves …”
“Exactly.”
“But we mustn’t be hasty. The important thing now is for the three of us to remain together. We should go into the city together and prepare slowly for our departure together. And together, we must try your plan to rouse Nicolas with the violin.”
I wanted to talk about Nicki. I wanted to ask her what lay behind his silence, what could she divine? But the words dried up in my throat. I thought as I had all along of her judgment in those first moments: “Disaster, my son.”
She put her arm around me and led me back towards the tower.
“I don’t have to read your mind,” she said, “to know what’s in your heart. Let’s take him into Paris. Let’s try to find the Stradivarius.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss me. “We were on the Devil’s Road together before all this happened,” she said. “We’ll be on it soon again.”
IT WAS as easy to take Nicolas into Paris as to lead him in everything else. Like a ghost he mounted his horse