The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [59]
“ ‘I never meant those words that way, vampire eyes,’ I said to her. ‘It has a different ring when you say it.…’ She was tugging at me, trying to make me look at her. ‘Come,’ I said to her, ‘I’ve something to show you.…’ And quickly I led her down the passage and down the spiral stairs through the dark courtyard. But I no more knew what I had to show her, really, than I knew where I was going. Only that I had to move towards it with a sublime and doomed instinct.
“We rushed through the early evening city, the sky overhead a pale violet now that the clouds were gone, the stars small and faint, the air around us sultry and fragrant even as we moved away from the spacious gardens, towards those mean and narrow streets where the flowers erupt in the cracks of the stones and the huge oleander shoots out thick, waxen stems of white and pink blooms, like a monstrous weed in the empty lots. I heard the staccato of Claudia’s steps as she rushed beside me, never once asking me to slacken my pace; and she stood finally, her face infinitely patient, looking up at me in a dark and narrow street where a few old slope-roofed French houses remained among the Spanish façades, ancient little houses, the plaster blistered from the moldering brick beneath. I had found the house now by a blind effort, aware that I had always known where it was and avoided it, always turned before this dark lampless corner, not wishing to pass the low window where I’d first heard Claudia cry. The house was standing still. Sunk lower than it was in those days, the alleyway crisscrossed with sagging cords of laundry, the weeds high along the low foundation, the two dormer windows broken and patched with cloth. I touched the shutters. ‘It was here I first saw you,’ I said to her, thinking to tell it to her so she would understand, yet feeling now the chill of her gaze, the distance of her stare. ‘I heard you crying. You were there in a room with your mother. And your mother was dead. Dead for days, and you didn’t know. You clung to her, whining … crying pitifully, your body white and feverish and hungry. You were trying to wake her from the dead, you were hugging her for warmth, for fear. It was almost morning and …’
“I put my hand to my temples. ‘I opened the shutters … I came into the room. I felt pity for you. Pity. But … something else.’
“I saw her lips slack, her eyes wide. ‘You … fed on me?’ she whispered. ‘I was your victim!’
“ ‘Yes!’ I said to her. ‘I did it.’
“There was a moment so elastic and painful as to be unbearable. She stood stark-still in the shadows, her huge eyes gathering the light, the warm air rising suddenly with a soft noise. And then she turned. I heard the clicking of her slippers as she ran. And ran. And ran. I stood frozen, hearing the sound grow smaller and smaller; and then I turned, the fear in me unravelling, growing huge and insurmountable, and I ran after her. It was unthinkable that I not catch her, that I not overtake her at once and tell her that I loved her, must have her, must keep her, and every second that I ran headlong down the dark street after her was like her slipping away from me drop by drop; my heart was pounding, unfed, pounding and rebelling against the strain. Until I came suddenly to a dead stop. She stood beneath a lamppost, staring mutely, as if she didn’t know me. I took her small waist in both hands and lifted her into the light. She studied me, her face contorted, her head turning as if she wouldn’t give me her direct glance, as if she must deflect an overpowering feeling of revulsion. ‘You killed me,’ she whispered. ‘You took my life!’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said to her, holding her so that I could feel her heart pounding. ‘Rather, I tried to take it. To drink it away. But you had a heart like no other heart I’ve ever felt,