The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [652]
“There is no life without death,” she whispered. “I am the way now, the way to the only hope of life without strife that there may ever be.” I felt her lips on my mouth. I wondered, would she ever do what she had done in the shrine? Would we lock together like that, taking the heated blood from each other?
“Listen to the singing in the villages, you can hear it.”
“Yes.”
“And then listen hard for the sounds of the city far below. Do you know how much death is in that city tonight? How many have been massacred? Do you know how many more will die at the hands of men, if we do not change the destiny of this place? If we do not sweep it up into a new vision? Do you know how long this battle has gone on?”
Centuries ago, in my time, this had been the richest colony of the French crown. Rich in tobacco, indigo, coffee. Fortunes had been made here in one season. And now the people picked at the earth; barefoot they walked through the dirt streets of their towns; machine guns barked in the city of Port-au-Prince; the dead in colored cotton shirts lay in heaps on the cobblestones. Children gathered water in cans from the gutters. Slaves had risen; slaves had won; slaves had lost everything.
But it is their destiny; their world; they who are human.
She laughed softly. “And what are we? Are we useless? How do we justify what we are! How do we stand back and watch what we are unwilling to alter?”
“And suppose it is wrong,” I said, “and the world is worse for it, and it is all horror finally—unrealizable, unexecutable, what then? And all those men in their graves, the whole earth a graveyard, a funeral pyre. And nothing is better. And it’s wrong, wrong.”
“Who’s to tell you it is wrong?”
I didn’t answer.
“Marius?” How scornfully she laughed. “Don’t you realize there are no fathers now? Angry or no?”
“There are brothers. And there are sisters,” I said. “And in each other we find our fathers and mothers, isn’t that so?”
Again she laughed, but it was gentle.
“Brothers and sisters,” she said. “Would you like to see your real brothers and sisters?”
I lifted my head from her shoulder. I kissed her cheek. “Yes. I want to see them.” My heart was racing again. “Please,” I said, even as I kissed her throat, and her cheekbones and her closed eyes. “Please.”
“Drink again,” she whispered. I felt her bosom swell against me. I pressed my teeth against her throat and the little miracle happened again, the sudden breaking of the crust, and the nectar poured into my mouth.
A great hot wave consumed me. No gravity; no specific time or place. Akasha.
Then I saw the redwood trees; the house with the lights burning in it, and in the high mountaintop room, the table and all of them around it, their faces reflected in the walls of dark glass, and the fire dancing. Marius, Gabrielle, Louis, Armand. They’re together and they’re safe! Am I dreaming this? They’re listening to a red-haired woman. And I know this woman! I’ve seen this woman.
She was in the dream of the red-haired twins.
But I want to see this—these immortals gathered at the table. The young red-haired one, the one at the woman’s side, I’ve seen her too. But she’d been alive then. At the rock concert, in the frenzy, I’d put my arm around her and looked into her crazed eyes. I’d kissed her and said her name; and it was as if a pit had opened under me, and I was falling down into those dreams of the twins that I could never really recall. Painted walls; temples.
It all faded suddenly. Gabrielle. Mother. Too late. I was reaching out; I was spinning through the darkness.
You have all of my powers now. You need only time to perfect them. You can bring death, you can move matter, you can make fire. You are ready now to go to them. But we will let them finish their reverie; their stupid schemes