The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [686]
Yet I was moving. I was thrashing about on the floor. Through the pain I could feel the carpet suddenly; I could feel my feet digging at it as if I were trying to climb a steep cliff. And then I heard the unmistakable sound of the fire near me; and I felt the wind gusting through the broken window, and I smelled all those soft sweet scents from the forest rushing into the room. A violent shock coursed through me, through every muscle and pore, my arms and legs flailing. Then still.
The pain was gone.
I lay there gasping, staring at the brilliant reflection of the fire in the glass ceiling, and feeling the air fill my lungs, and I realized I was crying again, brokenheartedly, like a child.
The twins knelt with their backs to us; and they had their arms around each other, and their heads were together, their hair mingling, as they caressed each other, gently, tenderly, as if talking through touch alone.
I couldn’t muffle my sobs. I turned over and drew my arm up under my face and just wept.
Marius was near me. And so was Gabrielle. I wanted to take Gabrielle into my arms. I wanted to say all the things I knew I should say—that it was over and we had survived it, and it was finished—but I couldn’t.
Then slowly I turned my head and looked at Akasha’s face again, her face still intact, though all the dense, shining whiteness was gone, and she was as pale, as translucent as glass! Even her eyes, her beautiful ink black eyes were becoming transparent, as if there were no pigment in them; it had all been the blood.
Her hair lay soft and silken beneath her cheek, and the dried blood was lustrous and ruby red.
I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t want to. I started to say her name and it caught in my throat. It was as if I shouldn’t do it. I never should have. I never should have gone up those marble steps and kissed her face in the shrine.
They were all coming to life again, the others. Armand was holding Daniel and Louis, who were both groggy and unable yet to stand; and Khayman had come forward with Jesse beside him, and the others were all right too. Pandora, trembling, her mouth twisted with her crying, stood far apart, hugging herself as if she were cold.
And the twins turned around and stood up now, Maharet’s arm around Mekare. And Mekare stared forward, expressionless, uncomprehending, the living statue; and Maharet said:
“Behold. The Queen of the Damned.”
PART V
… WORLD WITHOUT END, AMEN
Some things lighten nightfall
and make a Rembrandt of a grief
But mostly the swiftness of time
is a joke; on us. The flame-moth
is unable to laugh. What luck.
The myths are dead.
STAN RICE
“Poem on Crawling into Bed: Bitterness”
Body of Work (1983)
IAMI.
A vampire’s city—hot, teeming, and embracingly beautiful. Melting pot, marketplace, playground. Where the desperate and the greedy are locked in subversive commerce, and the sky belongs to everyone, and the beach goes on forever; and the lights outshine the heavens, and the sea is as warm as blood.
Miami. The happy hunting ground of the devil.
That’s why we are here, in Armand’s large, graceful white villa on the Night Island, surrounded by every conceivable luxury, and the wide open southern night.
Out there, across the water, Miami beckons; victims just waiting: the pimps, the thieves, the dope kings, and the killers. The nameless ones; so many who are almost as bad as I am, but not quite.
Armand had gone over at sunset with Marius; and they were back now, Armand playing chess with Santino in the drawing room, Marius reading as he did constantly, in the leather chair by the window over the beach.
Gabrielle had not appeared yet this evening; since Jesse left, she was frequently alone.
Khayman sat in the downstairs study talking with Daniel now, Daniel who liked to let the hunger build, Daniel who wanted to know