The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [430]
“Yes, as soon as I read it,” he said. And there passed between us a moment of silence, in which perhaps we were both remembering the questing immortal of long ago who had asked me over and over, Where did it begin?
Too much pain to be reinvoked. It was like taking pictures from the attic, cleaning away the dust and finding the colors still vibrant. And the pictures should have been portraits of dead ancestors and they were pictures of us.
I made some little nervous mortal gesture, raked my hair back off my forehead, tried to feel the cool of the breeze.
“What makes you so confident,” he asked, “that Marius won’t end this experiment as soon as you step on the stage tomorrow night?”
“Do you think any of the old ones would do that?” I answered.
He reflected for a long moment, slipping deep into his thoughts the way he used to do, so deep it was as if he forgot I was there. And it seemed that old rooms took shape around him, gaslight gave off its unsteady illumination, there came the sounds and scents of a former time from outside streets. We two in that New Orleans parlor, coal fire in the grate beneath the marble mantel, everything growing older except us.
And he stood now a modern child in sagging sweater and worn denim gazing off towards the deserted hills. Disheveled, eyes sparked with an inner fire, hair mussed. He roused himself slowly as if coming back to life.
“No. I think if the old ones trouble themselves with it at all, they will be too interested to do that.”
“Are you interested?”
“Yes, you know I am,” he said.
And his face colored slightly. It became even more human. In fact, he looked more like a mortal man than any of our kind I’ve ever known. “I’m here, aren’t I?” he said. And I sensed a pain in him, running like a vein of ore through his whole being, a vein that could carry feeling to the coldest depths.
I nodded. I took a deep breath and looked away from him, wishing I could say what I really wanted to say. That I loved him. But I couldn’t do that. The feeling was too strong.
“Whatever happens, it will be worth it,” I said. “That is, if you and I, and Gabrielle, and Armand … and Marius are together even for a short while, it will be worth it. Suppose Pandora chooses to show herself. And Mael. And God only knows how many others. What if all the old ones come. It will be worth it, Louis. As for the rest, I don’t care.”
“No, you care,” he said, smiling. He was deeply fascinated. “You’re just confident that it’s going to be exciting, and that whatever the battle, you’ll win.”
I bowed my head. I laughed. I slipped my hands into the pockets of my pants the way mortal men did in this day and age, and I walked on through the grass. The field still smelled of sun even in the cool California night. I didn’t tell him about the mortal part, the vanity of wanting to perform, the eerie madness that had come over me when I saw myself on the television screen, saw my face on the album covers plastered to the windows of the North Beach record store.
He followed at my side.
“If the old ones really wanted to destroy me,” I said, “don’t you think it would already be done?”
“No,” he said. “I saw you and I followed you. But before that, I couldn’t find you. As soon as I heard that you’d come out, I tried.”
“How did you hear?” I asked.
“There are places in all the big cities where the vampires meet,” he said. “Surely you know this by now.” “No, I don’t. Tell me,” I said.
“They are the bars we call the Vampire Connection,” he said, smiling a little ironically as he said it. “They are frequented by mortals, of course, and known to us by their names. There is Dr. Polidori in London, and Lamia in Paris. There is Bela Lugosi in the city of Los Angeles, and Carmilla and Lord Ruthven in New York. Here in San Francisco we have the most beautiful of them all, possibly, the cabaret called Dracula’s Daughter, on Castro Street.”
I started laughing. I couldn’t help it and I could see that he was about to laugh, too.
“And where are the names from Interview with the Vampire?” I asked with mock