The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [431]
“Verboten,” he said with a little lift of the eyebrows. “They are not fictional. They are real. But I will tell you they are playing your video clips on Castro Street now. The mortal customers demand it. They toast you with their vodka Bloody Marys. The Dance of les Innocents is pounding through the walls.”
A real laughing fit was definitely coming. I tried to stop it. I shook my head.
“But you’ve effected something of a revolution in speech in the back room as well,” he continued in the same mock sober fashion, unable to keep his face entirely straight.
“What do you mean?”
“Dark Trick, Dark Gift, Devil’s Road—they’re all bantering those words about, the crudest fledglings who never even styled themselves vampires. They’re imitating the book even though they condemn it utterly. They are loading themselves down with Egyptian jewelry. Black velvet is once again de rigueur.”
“Too perfect,” I said. “But these places, what are they like?”
“They’re saturated with the vampire trappings,” he said. “Posters from the vampire films adorn the walls, and the films themselves are projected continuously on high screens. The mortals who come are a regular freak show of theatrical types—punk youngsters, artists, those done up in black capes and white plastic fangs. They scarcely notice us. We are often drab by comparison. And in the dim lights we might as well be invisible, velvet and Egyptian jewelry and all. Of course, no one preys upon these mortal customers. We come to the vampire bars for information. The vampire bar is the safest place for a mortal in all Christendom. You cannot kill in the vampire bar.”
“Wonder somebody didn’t think of it before,” I said.
“They did think of it,” he said. “In Paris, it was the Théâtre des Vampyres.”
“Of course,” I admitted. He went on:
“The word went out a month ago on the Vampire Connection that you were back. And the news was old then. They said you were hunting New Orleans, and then they learned what you meant to do. They had early copies of your autobiography. There was endless talk about the video films.”
“And why didn’t I see them in New Orleans?” I asked.
“Because New Orleans has been for half a century Armand’s territory. No one dares to hunt New Orleans. They learned through mortal sources of information, out of Los Angeles and New York.”
“I didn’t see Armand in New Orleans,” I said.
“I know,” he answered. He looked troubled, confused for a moment.
I felt a little tightening in the region of the heart.
“No one knows where Armand is,” he said a little dully. “But when he was there, he killed the young ones. They left New Orleans to him. They say that many of the old ones do that, kill the young ones. They say it of me, but it isn’t so. I haunt San Francisco like a ghost. I do not trouble anyone save my unfortunate mortal victims.”
All this didn’t surprise me much.
“There are too many of us,” he said, “as there always have been. And there is much warring. And a coven in any given city is only a means by which three or more powerful ones agree not to destroy each other, and to share the territory according to the rules.”
“The rules, always the rules,” I said.
“They are different now, and more stringent. Absolutely no evidence of the kill must ever be left about. Not a single corpse must be left for mortals to investigate.”
“Of course.”
“And there must be no exposure whatsoever in the world of close-up photography and zoom lenses, of freeze-frame video examination—no risk that could lead to capture, incarceration, and scientific verification by the mortal world.”
I nodded. But my pulse was racing. I loved being the outlaw, the one who had already broken every single law. And so they were imitating my book, were they? Oh, it was started already. Wheels set into motion.
“Lestat, you think you understand,” he said patiently, “but do you? Let the world have but one tiny fragment of our tissue for their microscopes, and there will be no arguments anymore about legend or superstition. The proof will be there.”
“I don’t agree with you, Louis,” I said. “It isn’t