The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (78 page)

“This was something I did not wish to hear in particular. Babette had died young, insane, restrained finally from wandering towards the ruins of Pointe du Lac, insisting she had seen the devil there and must find him; I’d heard of it in wisps of gossip. And then came the funeral notices. I’d thought occasionally of going to her, of trying some way to rectify what I had done; and other times I thought it would all heal itself; and in my new life of nightly killing, I had grown far from the attachment I’d felt for her or for my sister or any mortal. And I watched the tragedy finally as one might from a theater balcony, moved from time to time, but never sufficiently to jump the railing and join the players on the stage.

“ ‘Don’t talk of her,’ I said.

“ ‘Very well. I was talking of the plantation. Not her. Her! Your lady love, your fancy.’ He smiled at me. ‘You know, I had it all my way finally in the end, didn’t I? But I was telling you about my young friend and how …’

“ ‘I wish you would play the music,’ I said softly, unobtrusively, but as persuasively as possible. Sometimes this worked with Lestat. If I said something just right he found himself doing what I’d said. And now he did just that: with a little snarl, as if to say, ‘You fool,’ he began playing the music. I heard the doors of the back parlor open and Claudia’s steps move down the hall. Don’t come, Claudia, I was thinking, feeling; go away from it before we’re all destroyed. But she came on steadily until she reached the hall mirror. I could hear her opening the small table drawer, and then the zinging of her hairbrush. She was wearing a floral perfume. I turned slowly to face her as she appeared in the door, still all in white, and moved across the carpet silently towards the piano. She stood at the end of the keyboard, her hands folded on the wood, her chin resting on her hands, her eyes fixed on Lestat.

“I could see his profile and her small face beyond, looking up at him. ‘What is it now!’ he said, turning the page and letting his hand drop to his thigh. ‘You irritate me. Your very presence irritates me!’ His eyes moved over the page.

“ ‘Does it?’ she said in her sweetest voice.

“ ‘Yes, it does. And I’ll tell you something else. I’ve met someone who would make a better vampire than you do.’

“This stunned me. But I didn’t have to urge him to go on. ‘Do you get my meaning?’ he said to her.

“ ‘Is it supposed to frighten me?’ she asked.

“ ‘You’re spoiled because you’re an only child,’ he said. ‘You need a brother. Or rather, I need a brother. I get weary of you both. Greedy, brooding vampires that haunt our own lives. I dislike it.’

“ ‘I suppose we could people the world with vampires, the three of us,’ she said.

“ ‘You think so!’ he said, smiling, his voice with a note of triumph. ‘Do you think you could do it? I suppose Louis has told you how it was done or how he thinks it was done. You don’t have the power.
Either
of you,’ he said.

“This seemed to disturb her. Something she had not accounted for. She was studying him. I could see she did not entirely believe him.

“ ‘And what gave you the power?’ she asked softly, but with a touch of sarcasm.

“ ‘That, my dear, is one of those things which you may never know. For even the Erebus in which we live must have its aristocracy.’

“ ‘You’re a liar,’ she said with a short laugh. And just as he touched his fingers to the keys again, she said, ‘But you upset my plans.’

“ ‘Your plans?’ he asked.

“ ‘I came to make peace with you, even if you are the father of lies. You’re my father,’ she said. ‘I want to make peace with you. I want things to be as they were.’

“Now he was the one who did not believe. He threw a glance at me, then looked at her. ‘That can be. Just stop asking me questions. Stop following me. Stop searching in every alleyway for other vampires. There are no other vampires! And this is where you live and this is where you stay!’ He looked confused
for the moment, as if raising his own voice had confused him. ‘I take care of you. You don’t need anything.’

“ ‘And you don’t know anything, and that is why you detest my questions. All that’s clear. So now let’s have peace, because there’s nothing else to be had. I have a present for you.’

“ ‘And I hope it’s a beautiful woman with endowments you’ll never possess,’ he said, looking her up and down. Her face changed when he did this. It was as if she almost lost some control I’d never seen her lose. But then she just shook her head and reached out one small, rounded arm and tugged at his sleeve.

“ ‘I meant what I said. I’m weary of arguing with you. Hell is hatred, people living together in eternal hatred. We’re not in hell. You can take the present or not, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Only let’s have an end to all this. Before Louis, in disgust, leaves us both.’ She was urging him now to leave the piano, bringing down the wooden cover again over the keys, turning him on the piano stool until his eyes followed her to the door.

“ ‘You’re serious. Present, what do you mean, present?’

“ ‘You haven’t fed enough, I can tell by your color, by your eyes. You’ve never fed enough at this hour. Let’s say that I can give you a precious moment.
Suffer the little children to come unto me
,’ she whispered, and was gone. He looked at me. I said nothing. I might as well have been drugged. I could see the curiosity in his face, the suspicion. He followed her down the hall. And then I heard him let out a long, conscious moan, a perfect mingling of hunger and lust.

“When I reached the door, and I took my time, he was bending over the settee. Two small boys lay there, nestled among the soft velvet pillows, totally abandoned to sleep as children can be, their pink mouths open, their small round faces utterly smooth. Their skin was moist, radiant, the curls of the darker of the two damp and pressed to the forehead. I saw at once by their pitiful and identical clothes that they were orphans. And they had ravaged a meal set before them on our best
china. The tablecloth was stained with wine, and a small bottle stood half full among the greasy plates and forks. But there was an aroma in the room I did not like. I moved closer, better to see the sleeping ones, and I could see their throats were bare but untouched. Lestat had sunk down beside the darker one; he was by far the more beautiful. He might have been lifted to the painted dome of a cathedral. No more than seven years old, he had that perfect beauty that is of neither sex, but angelic. Lestat brought his hand down gently on the pale throat, and then he touched the silken lips. He let out a sigh which had again that longing, that sweet, painful anticipation. ‘Oh … Claudia …’ he sighed. ‘You’ve outdone yourself. Where did you find them?’

“She said nothing. She had receded to a dark armchair and sat back against two large pillows, her legs out straight on the rounded cushion, her ankles drooping so that you did not see the bottom of her white slippers but the curved insteps and the tight, delicate little straps. She was staring at Lestat. ‘Drunk on brandy wine,’ she said. ‘A thimbleful!’ and gestured to the table. ‘I thought of you when I saw them … I thought if I share this with him, even he will forgive.’

“He was warmed by her flattery. He looked at her now and reached out and clutched her white lace ankle. ‘Ducky!’ he whispered to her and laughed, but then he hushed, as if he didn’t wish to wake the doomed children. He gestured to her, intimately, seductively, ‘Come sit beside him. You take him, and I’ll take this one. Come.’ He embraced her as she passed and nestled beside the other boy. He stroked the boy’s moist hair, he ran his fingers over the rounded lids and along the fringe of lashes. And then he put his whole softened hand across the boy’s face and felt at the temples, cheeks, and jaw, massaging the unblemished flesh. He had forgotten I was there or she was there, but he withdrew his hand and sat still for a moment, as though his desire was making him dizzy. He glanced at the ceiling and then down at the perfect feast. He turned the boy’s head slowly against the back of the couch, and the boy’s eyebrows tensed for an instant and a moan escaped his lips.

“Claudia’s eyes were steady on Lestat, though now she
raised her left hand and slowly undid the buttons of the child who lay beside her and reached inside the shabby little shirt and felt the bare flesh. Lestat did the same, but suddenly it was as if his hand had life itself and drew his arm into the shirt and around the boy’s small chest in a tight embrace; and Lestat slid down off the cushions of the couch to his knees on the floor, his arm locked to the boy’s body, pulling it up close to him so that his face was buried in the boy’s neck. His lips moved over the neck and over the chest and over the tiny nipple of the chest and then, putting his other arm into the open shirt, so that the boy lay hopelessly wound in both arms, he drew the boy up tight and sank his teeth into his throat. The boy’s head fell back, the curls loose as he was lifted, and again he let out a small moan and his eyelids fluttered—but never opened. And Lestat knelt, the boy pressed against him, sucking hard, his own back arched and rigid, his body rocking back and forth carrying the boy, his long moans rising and falling in time with the slow rocking, until suddenly his whole body tensed, and his hands seemed to grope for some way to push the boy away, as if the boy himself in his helpless slumber were clinging to Lestat; and finally he embraced the boy again and moved slowly forward over him, letting him down among the pillows, the sucking softer, now almost inaudible.

“He withdrew. His hands pressed the boy down. He knelt there, his head thrown back, so the wavy blond hair hung loose and dishevelled. And then he slowly sank to the floor, turning, his back against the leg of the couch. ‘Ah … God …’ he whispered, his head back, his lids half-mast. I could see the color rushing to his cheeks, rushing into his hands. One hand lay on his bent knee, fluttering, and then it lay still.

“Claudia had not moved. She lay like a Botticelli angel beside the unharmed boy. The other’s body already withered, the neck like a fractured stem, the heavy head falling now at an odd angle, the angle of death, into the pillow.

“But something was wrong. Lestat was staring at the ceiling. I could see his tongue between his teeth. He lay too still, the tongue, as it were, trying to get out of the mouth, trying to
move past the barrier of the teeth and touch the lip. He appeared to shiver, his shoulders convulsing … then relaxing heavily; yet he did not move. A veil had fallen over his clear gray eyes. He was peering at the ceiling. Then a sound came out of him. I stepped forward from the shadows of the hallway, but Claudia said in a sharp hiss, ‘Go back!’

“ ‘Louis …’ he was saying. I could hear it now … ‘Louis … Louis.…’

“ ‘Don’t you like it, Lestat?’ she asked him.

“ ‘Something’s wrong with it,’ he gasped, and his eyes widened as if the mere speaking were a colossal effort. He could not move. I saw it. He could not move at all. ‘Claudia!’ He gasped again, and his eyes rolled towards her.

“ ‘Don’t you like the taste of children’s blood …?’ she asked softly.

“ ‘Louis …’ he whispered, finally lifting his head just for an instant. It fell back on the couch. ‘Louis, it’s … it’s absinthe! Too much absinthe!’ he gasped. ‘She’s poisoned them with it. She’s poisoned me. Louis.…’ He tried to raise his hand. I drew nearer, the table between us.

“ ‘Stay back!’ she said again. And now she slid off the couch and approached him, peering down into his face as he had peered at the child. ‘Absinthe, Father,’ she said, ‘and laudanum!’

“ ‘Demon!’ he said to her. ‘Louis … put me in my coffin.’ He struggled to rise. ‘Put me in my coffin!’ His voice was hoarse, barely audible. The hand fluttered, lifted, and fell back.

“ ‘I’ll put you in your coffin, Father,’ she said, as though she were soothing him. ‘I’ll put you in it forever.’ And then, from beneath the pillows of the couch, she drew a kitchen knife.

“ ‘Claudia! Don’t do this thing!’ I said to her. But she flashed at me a virulency I’d never seen in her face, and as I stood there paralyzed, she gashed his throat, and he let out a sharp, choking cry. ‘God!’ he shouted out. ‘God!’

“The blood poured out of him, down his shirt front, down his coat. It poured as it might never pour from a human being, all the blood with which he had filled himself before the child and from the child; and he kept turning his head, twisting, making
the bubbling gash gape. She sank the knife into his chest now and he pitched forward, his mouth wide, his fangs exposed, both hands convulsively flying towards the knife, fluttering around its handle, slipping off its handle. He looked up at me, the hair falling down into his eyes. ‘Louis! Louis!’ He let out one more gasp and fell sideways on the carpet. She stood looking down at him. The blood flowed everywhere like water. He was groaning, trying to raise himself, one arm pinned beneath his chest, the other shoving at the floor. And now, suddenly, she flew at him and clamping both arms about his neck, bit deep into him as he struggled. ‘Louis, Louis!’ he gasped over and over, struggling, trying desperately to throw her off; but she rode him, her body lifted by his shoulder, hoisted and dropped, hoisted and dropped, until she pulled away; and, finding the floor quickly, she backed away from him, her hands to her lips, her eyes for the moment clouded, then clear. I turned away from her, my body convulsed by what I’d seen, unable to look any longer. ‘Louis!’ she said; but I only shook my head. For a moment, the whole house seemed to sway. But she said, ‘Look what’s happening to him!’

“He had ceased to move. He lay now on his back. And his entire body was shrivelling, drying up, the skin thick and wrinkled, and so white that all the tiny veins showed through it. I gasped, but I could not take my eyes off it, even as the shape of the bones began to show through, his lips drawing back from his teeth, the flesh of his nose drying to two gaping holes. But his eyes, they remained the same, staring wildly at the ceiling, the irises dancing from side to side, even as the flesh cleaved to the bones, became nothing but a parchment wrapping for the bones, the clothes hollow and limp over the skeleton that remained. Finally the irises rolled to the top of his head, and the whites of his eyes went dim. The thing lay still. A great mass of wavy blond hair, a coat, a pair of gleaming boots; and this horror that had been Lestat, and I staring helplessly at it.”