The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [692]
I got up and went after him. I looked across the great divide of black water. At the shimmering reflection of the skyline. I looked at him.
“Do you know what it’s like, not to carry that burden?” he whispered. “To know now for the first time that I am free?”
I didn’t answer. But I could most certainly feel it. Yet I was afraid for him, afraid perhaps that it had been the anchor, as the Great Family was the anchor for Maharet.
“No,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “It’s as if a curse has been removed. I wake; I think I must go down to the shrine; I must burn the incense; bring the flowers; I must stand before them and speak to them; and try to comfort them if they are suffering inside. Then I realize that they’re gone. It’s over, finished. I’m free to go wherever I would go and do whatever I would like.” He paused, reflecting, looking at the lights again. Then, “What about you? Why aren’t you free too? I wish I understood you.”
“You do. You always have,” I said. I shrugged.
“You’re burning with dissatisfaction. And we can’t comfort you, can we? It’s their love you want.” He made a little gesture towards the city.
“You comfort me,” I answered. “All of you. I couldn’t think of leaving you, not for very long, anyway. But you know, when I was on that stage in San Francisco …”I didn’t finish. What was the use of saying it, if he didn’t know. It had been everything I’d ever wanted it to be until the great whirlwind had descended and carried me away.
“Even though they never believed you?” he asked. “They thought you were merely a clever performer? An author with a hook, as they say?”
“They knew my name!” I answered. “It was my voice they heard. They saw me up there above the footlights.”
He nodded. “And so the book, The Queen of the Damned,” he said.
No answer.
“Come down with us. Let us try to keep you company. Talk to us about what took place.”
“You saw what took place.”
I felt a little confusion suddenly; a curiosity in him that he was reluctant to reveal. He was still looking at me.
I thought of Gabrielle, the way she would start to ask me questions and stop. Then I realized. Why, I’d been a fool not to see it before. They wanted to know what powers she’d given me; they wanted to know how much her blood had affected me; and all this time I’d kept those secrets locked inside. I kept them locked there now. Along with the image of those dead bodies strewn throughout Azim’s temple; along with the memory of the ecstasy I’d felt when I’d slain every man in my path. And along with yet another awful and unforgettable moment: her death, when I had failed to use the gifts to help her!
And now it started again, the obsession with the end. Had she seen me lying there so close to her? Had she known of my refusal to aid her? Or had her soul risen when the first blow was struck?
Marius looked out over the water, at the tiny boats speeding towards the harbor to the south. He was thinking of how many centuries it had taken him to acquire the powers he now possessed. Infusions of her blood alone had not done it. Only after a thousand years had he been able to rise towards the clouds as if he were one of them, unfettered, unafraid. He was thinking of how such things vary from one immortal to another; how no one knows what power is locked inside another; no one knows perhaps what power is locked within oneself.
Ail very polite; but I could not confide in him or anyone just yet.
“Look,” I said. “Let me mourn just a little while more. Let me create my dark images here, and have the written words for friends. Then later I’ll come to you; I’ll join you all. Maybe I’ll obey the rules. Some of them, anyway, who knows? What are you going to do if I don’t, by the way, and haven’t I asked you this before?”
He was clearly startled.
“You are the damnedest creature!” he whispered. “You make me think of the old story about Alexander the Great. He wept when there were no more worlds to conquer. Will you weep when there are no more rules to break?”
“Ah, but there are always rules to break.”
He laughed under his