The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice [92]
“ ‘But it wasn’t over …’ I whispered.
“And I could see the tears gathering in his eyes, his mouth twisting with pain.
“ ‘How did it happen to her?’ I asked him.
“ ‘I don’t know,’ he gasped, shaking his head, the flask pressed to his forehead as if it were something cool, refreshing, when it was not.
“ ‘It came into the inn?’
“ ‘They said she went out to it,’ he confessed, the tears coursing down his cheeks. ‘Everything was locked! They saw to that. Doors, windows! Then it was morning and they were all shouting, and she was gone. The window stood wide open, and she wasn’t there. I didn’t even take time for my robe. I was running. I came to a dead halt over her, out there, behind the inn. My foot all but came down on her … she was just lying there under the peach trees. She held an empty cup. Clinging to it, an empty cup! They said it lured her … she was trying to give it water.…’
“The flask slipped from his hands. He clapped his hands over his ears, his body bent, his head bowed.
“For a long time I sat there watching him; I had no words to say to him. And when he cried softly that they wanted to desecrate her, that they said she, Emily, was now a vampire, I assured him softly, though I don’t think he ever heard me, that she was not.
“He moved forward finally, as if he might fall. He appeared to be reaching for the candle, and before his arm rested on the buffet, his finger touched it so the hot wax extinguished the tiny bit that was left of the wick. We were in darkness then, and his head had fallen on his arm.
“All of the light of the room seemed gathered now in Claudia’s eyes. But as the silence lengthened and I sat there, wondering, hoping Morgan wouldn’t lift his head again, the woman came to the door. Her candle illuminated him, drunk, asleep.
“ ‘You go now,’ she said to me. Dark figures crowded around her, and the old wooden inn was alive with the shuffling of men and women. ‘Go by the fire!’
“ ‘What are you going to do!’ I demanded of her, rising and holding Claudia. ‘I want to know what you propose to do!’
“ ‘Go by the fire,’ she commanded.
“ ‘No, don’t do this,’ I said. But she narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth. ‘You go!’ she growled.
“ ‘Morgan,’ I said to him; but he didn’t hear me, he couldn’t hear me.
“ ‘Leave him be,’ said the woman fiercely. ”
‘But it’s stupid, what you’re doing; don’t you understand? This woman’s dead!’ I pleaded with her.
“ ‘Louis,’ Claudia whispered, so that they couldn’t hear her, her arm tightening around my neck beneath the fur of my hood. ‘Let these people alone.’
“The others were moving into the room now, encircling the table, their faces grim as they looked at us.
“ ‘But where do these vampires come from!’ I whispered. ‘You’ve searched your cemetery! If it’s vampires, where do they hide from you? This woman can’t do you harm. Hunt your vampires if you must.’
“ ‘By day,’ she said gravely, winking her eye and slowly nodding her head. ‘By day. We get them, by day.’
“ ‘Where, out there in the graveyard, digging up the graves of your own villagers?’
“She shook her head. ‘The ruins,’ she said. ‘It was always the ruins. We were wrong. In my grandfather’s time it was the ruins, and it is the ruins again. We’ll take them down stone by stone if we have to. But you … you go now. Because if you don’t go, we’ll drive you out there into that dark now!’
“And then out from behind her apron she drew her clenched fist with the stake in it and held it up in the flickering light of the candle. ‘You hear me, you go!’ she said; and the men pressed in close behind her, their mouths set, their eyes blazing in the light.
“ ‘Yes …’ I said to her. ‘Out there. I would prefer that. Out there.