The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [570]
Finally Lestat emerged from the house and hurried towards the lair he had made for himself beneath the acacia trees against the hillside. Through a trapdoor he descended, down earthen steps, and into a dank chamber.
So it was peace for them all, peace until tonight when he would be the bringer of bad tidings.
The sun rose closer to the horizon; the first deflected rays appeared, which always dulled Khayman’s vision. He focused upon the soft deepening colors of the orchard as all the rest of the world lost its distinct lines and shapes. He closed his eyes for a moment, realizing that he must go into the house, that he must seek some cool and shadowy place where mortals were unlikely to disturb him.
And when the sun set, he’d be waiting for them when they woke. He would tell them what he knew; he would tell them about the others. With a sudden stab of pain he thought of Mael, and of Jesse, whom he could not find, as if the earth had devoured them.
He thought of Maharet and he wanted to weep. But he made his way towards the house now. The sun was warm on his back; his limbs were heavy. Tomorrow night, whatever else came to pass, he wouldn’t be alone. He would be with Lestat and his cohorts; and if they turned him away, he would seek out Armand. He would go north to Marius.
He heard the sound first—a loud, crackling roar. He turned, shielding his eyes from the rising sun. A great spray of earth shot up from the floor of the forest. The acacias swayed as if in a storm, limbs cracking, roots heaved up from the soil, trunks falling helter-skelter.
In a dark streak of windblown garments the Queen rose with ferocious speed, the limp body of Lestat dangling from her arms as she made for the western sky away from the sunrise.
Khayman gave a loud cry before he could stop himself. And his cry rang out over the stillness of the valley. So she had taken her lover.
Oh, poor lover, oh, poor beautiful blond-haired prince.…
But there was no time to think or to act or to know his own heart; he turned to the shelter of the house; the sun had struck the clouds and the horizon had become an inferno.
DANIEL stirred in the dark. The sleep seemed to lift like a blanket that had been about to crush him. He saw the gleam of Armand’s eye. He heard Armand’s whisper: “She’s taken him.”
JESSE moaned aloud. Weightless, she drifted in the pearly gloom. She saw the two rising figures as if in a dance—the Mother and the Son. Like saints ascending on the painted ceiling of a church. Her lips formed the words “the Mother.”
IN THEIR deep-dug grave beneath the ice, Pandora and Santino slept in each other’s arms. Pandora heard the sound. She heard Khayman’s cry. She saw Lestat with his eyes closed and his head thrown back, rising in Akasha’s embrace. She saw Akasha’s black eyes fixed upon his sleeping face. Pandora’s heart stopped in terror.
MARIUS closed his eyes. He could keep them open no longer. Above the wolves howled; the wind tore at the steel roof of the compound. Through the blizzard the feeble rays of the sun came as if igniting the swirling snow, and he could feel the dulling heat move down through layer upon layer of ice to numb him.
He saw the sleeping figure of Lestat in her arms; he saw her rising into the sky. “Beware of her, Lestat,” he whispered with his last conscious breath. “Danger.”
ON THE cool carpeted floor, Khayman stretched out and buried his face in his arm. And a dream came at once, a soft silky dream of a summer night in a lovely place, where the sky was big over the city lights, and they were all together, these immortals whose names he knew and held to his heart now.
PART III
AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE …
Hide me
from me.
Fill these
holes with eyes
for mine are not
mine. Hide
me head & need
for I am no good
so dead in life
so much time.
Be wing, and
shade my me
from my desire
to be
hooked fish.
That worm
wine
looks sweet and
makes