The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [63]
“ ‘You were right. He knows nothing. There is nothing he can tell us,’ I said to her.
“ ‘Did you ever really think that he did?’ she asked me in that same small voice. ‘We’ll find others of our kind,’ she said. ‘We’ll find them in central Europe. That is where they live in such numbers that the stories, both fiction and fact, fill volumes. I’m convinced it was from there that all vampires came, if they came from any place at all. We’ve tarried too long with him. Come out. Let the flesh instruct the mind.’
“I think I felt a tremor of delight when she said these words, Let the flesh instruct the mind. ‘Put books aside and kill,’ she was whispering to me. I followed her down the stairs, across the courtyard and down a narrow alley to another street. Then she turned with outstretched arms for me to pick her up and carry her, though, of course, she was not tired; she wanted only to be near my ear, to clutch my neck. ‘I haven’t told him my plan, about the voyage, the money,’ I was saying to her, conscious of something about her that was beyond me as she rode my measured steps, weightless in my arms.
“ ‘He killed the other vampire,’ she said.
“ ‘No, why do you say this?’ I asked her. But it wasn’t the saying of it that disturbed me, stirred my soul as if it were a pool of water longing to be still. I felt as if she were moving me slowly towards something, as if she were the pilot of our slow walk through the dark street. ‘Because I know it now,’ she said with authority. ‘The vampire made a slave of him, and he would no more be a slave than I would be a slave, and so he killed him. Killed him before he knew what he might know, and then in panic made a slave of you. And you’ve been his slave.’
“ ‘Never really …’ I whispered to her. I felt the press of her cheek against my temple. She was cold and needed the kill. ‘Not a slave. Just some sort of mindless accomplice,’ I confessed to her, confessed to myself. I could feel the fever for the kill rising in me, a knot of hunger in my insides, a throbbing in the temples, as if the veins were contracting and my body might become a map of tortured vessels.
“ ‘No, slave,’ she persisted in her grave monotone, as though thinking aloud, the words revelations, pieces of a puzzle. ‘And I shall free us both.’
“I stopped. Her hand pressed me, urged me on. We were walking down the long wide alley beside the cathedral, towards the lights of Jackson Square, the water rushing fast in the gutter down the center of the alley, silver in the moonlight. She said, ‘I will kill him.’
“I stood still at the end of the alley. I felt her shift in my arm, move down as if she could accomplish being free of me without the awkward aid of my hands. I set her on the stone sidewalk. I said no to her, I shook my head. I had that feeling then which I described before, that the buildings around me—the Cabildo, the cathedral, the apartments along the square—all this was silk and illusion and would ripple suddenly in a horrific wind, and a chasm would open in the earth that was the reality. ‘Claudia,’ I gasped, turning away from her.
“ ‘And why not kill him!’ she said now, her voice rising, silvery and finally shrill. ‘I have no use for him! I can get nothing from him! And he causes me pain, which I will not abide!’
“ ‘And if he had so little use for us!’ I said to her. But the vehemence was false. Hopeless. She was at a distance from me now, small shoulders straight and determined, her pace rapid, like a little girl who, walking out on Sundays with her parents, wants to walk ahead and pretend she is all alone. ‘Claudia!’ I called after her, catching up with her in a stride. I reached for the small waist and felt her stiffen as if she had become iron. ‘Claudia, you cannot kill him!’ I whispered. She moved backwards, skipping, clicking