The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [556]
“These twins,” she’d said, “these evil sisters, they have spoken such abominations.”
“Have mercy,” he had pleaded. “They meant no harm, I swear they tell the truth. Let them go again, Your Highness. They cannot change it now.”
Oh, such compassion he had felt for all of them! The twins, and his afflicted sovereign.
“Ah, but you see, we must put it to the test, their revolting lies,” she had said. “You must come closer, my devoted steward, you who have always served me with such devotion—”
“My Queen, my beloved Queen, what do you want of me?”
And with the same lovely expression on her face, she had lifted her icy hands to touch his throat, to hold him fast suddenly with a strength that terrified him. In shock, he’d watched her eyes go blank, her mouth open. The two tiny fang teeth he’d seen, as she rose on tiptoe with the eerie grace of nightmare. Not me. You would not do this to me! My Queen, I am Khayman!
He should have perished long before now, as so many blood drinkers had afterwards. Gone without a trace, like the nameless multitudes dissolved within the earth of all lands and nations. But he had not perished. And the twins—at least one—had lived on also.
Did she know it? Did she know those terrible dreams? Had they come to her from the minds of all the others who had received them? Or had she traveled the night around the world, dreamless, and without cease, and bent upon one task, since her resurrection?
They live, my Queen, they live on in the one if not in the two together. Remember the old prophecy! If only she could hear his voice!
He opened his eyes. He was back again in the moment, with this ossified thing that was his body. And the rising music saturated him with its remorseless rhythm. It pounded against his ears. The flashing lights blinded him.
He turned his back and put his hand against the wall. Never had he been so engulfed by sound. He felt himself losing consciousness, but Lestat’s voice called him back.
With his fingers splayed across his eyes, Khayman looked down at the fiery white square of the stage. Behold the devil dance and sing with such obvious joy. It touched Khayman’s heart in spite of himself.
Lestat’s powerful tenor needed no electric amplification. And even the immortals lost among their prey were singing with him, it was so contagious, this passion. Everywhere he looked Khayman saw them caught up, mortal and immortal alike. Bodies twisted in time with the bodies on the stage. Voices rose; the hall swayed with one wave of movement after another.
The giant face of Lestat expanded on the video screen as the camera moved in upon it. The blue eye fixed upon Khayman and winked.
“WHY DON’T YOU KILL ME! YOU KNOW WHAT I AM!”
Lestat’s laughter rose above the twanging scream of the guitars.
“DON’T YOU KNOW EVIL WHEN YOU SEE IT?”
Ah, such a belief in goodness, in heroism. Khayman could see it even in the creature’s eyes, a dark gray shadow there of tragic need. Lestat threw back his head and roared again; he stamped his feet and howled; he looked to the rafters as if they were the firmament.
Khayman forced himself to move; he had to escape. He made his way clumsily to the door, as if suffocating in the deafening sound. Even his sense of balance had been affected. The blasting music came after him into the stairwell, but at least he was sheltered from the flashing lights. Leaning against the wall, he tried to clear his vision.
Smell of blood. Hunger of so many blood drinkers in the hall. And the throb of the music through the wood and the plaster.
He moved down the steps, unable to hear his own feet on the concrete, and sank down finally on a deserted landing. He wrapped his arms around his knees and bowed his head.
The music was like the music of old, when all songs had been the songs of the body,