Drink because I want you. I have much for you to do.
Ah, there was that nagging voice, that being talking inside his head. Who was this arrogant blood drinker shogun who thought he could tell Cyril what to do?
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Human beings were staring at him. Well, let them stare. His brown hair was filthy, of course, and so were the rags he wore, but he accelerated his pace, skillfully, moving fast away from prying eyes. Then he looked down. He was barefoot. And who's to say that I can't be barefoot? He laughed under his breath. After he'd fed, he would bathe, wash himself properly, and make himself "blend in."
However did he get here, to this country? he wondered. Sometimes he could remember and sometimes he could not.
And why was he seeking out this particular place--a narrow building that he kept seeing in his mind?
You know what I want of you.
"No, I don't," he said aloud, "and there's no telling I'll do it."
"Oh, yes, you will," came the answer very distinctly right inside his brain. "If you do not do what I wish I will punish you."
He laughed. "You think you can?"
Other blood drinkers had been threatening to punish him ever since he could remember.
Long ago on the flank of Mount Fuji, an ancient blood drinker had said to him, "This is my land!" Well, guess what happened to him? He laughed when he thought of it.
But long before that, he'd been laughing at threats from those around him--those blood drinker priests of her temple, always threatening to punish him if he didn't do her will. He had marveled at the timidity of the blood gods who submitted to her inane rules. And when he'd brought his fledglings right into the temple to drink her blood, those cowardly priests had backed off, not daring to challenge him.
The last time he'd brought that pretty girl, that Greek girl, Eudoxia, and told her to drink from the Mother. Those priests had been in a rage.
And what about the Mother? She'd been nothing more than a statue full of the Blood by that time. So much for stories of divinity and high calling and reasons to suffer and sacrifice and obey.
Even if he went way back, as far as he could recall, to the very first time he'd been in her presence, brought there by the elder to drink from her and become a blood god, he'd thought it was foolishness, lies. He'd been sly enough to do what they told him. Ah, that blood had felt so good. And what had life been for him before that, backbreaking labor, hunger, his father's constant bullying. All right, I'll die and be reborn. And then I'll smash in your faces with my new godly fists! He knew a blood god was infinitely stronger than a human being. You want to give me that power? I'll bend the knee. But you'll regret it, my sanctimonious friends.
"Drink," said the being talking in his head. "Now. Choose one of the victims the world offers you."
"You don't have to tell me how to do it, you fool," he said, spitting the words into the rain. He'd stopped and they were staring at him and then he did this feint he had perfected, falling down on his knees, then rising, head bowed, as he staggered into a deep but small shop in a narrow building, where only one serving girl waited for a customer, and came towards him with arms out, asking if he were ill.
It was so simple to force her into the storage room behind the little emporium and hold her tight in one arm as he sank his fangs into her neck. She shuddered and shivered like a bird in his grasp, words strangled in her throat. The blood was sweet with innocence, with deep convictions of harmony amongst all the creatures of the planet, with some exalted sense that this encounter now which clouded her mind and ultimately paralyzed her must have meaning. Else how could such a thing happen to her?
She lay on the floor at his feet.
He was reflecting on the quality of the blood. So rich, so healthy, so filled with exotic flavors, so different from blood in the time he'd been made. Ah, these robust and powerful modern humans, what a world of food and drink they enjoyed. The blood was sharpening his vision as it always did, and calming something in him for which he had no name.
He snapped off the electric lights in the storage room and waited. Within seconds a pair of customers had come into the shop, a big gawky boy and a pale emaciated European girl.
"Back here," he said, beckoning to them, smiling at them, focusing his precious power right on their eyes, glancing from one to the other. "Come."
This was his favorite way to do it, with a tender throat in each hand, taking one and then the other, suckling, lapping, sloshing the hot salty blood around in his mouth, then going at it again, and then the first victim again, letting both weaken at the same gentle speed until he was satisfied. He could drink no more. Three deaths now had passed through him in wrenching spasms. He was hot and tired and he felt like he could see through walls as well as walk through them. He was full.
He took the boy's shirt, white and fresh and clean, and he put that on. The dungarees were all right too. And the leather belt fit. The shoes were big and soft and laced up, and they felt loose to him, but it was better than being stared at, better than having to fight with some little gang of mortals and then flee them, though it was easy enough to do.
Now with the young European woman's hairbrush he cleaned all the dust and soil from his brown hair. And with her dress, he wiped off his face and hands. It made him sad to look at them dead, the three of them, his victims, and he had to admit it always did.
"What sentimental nonsense," said the being talking inside him.
"You shut up, what do you know!" he said aloud.
He walked through the brightly lighted store and back out into the throng in the streets. The lighted towers rose on either side of him; the lights were so beautiful to him, so magical, climbing higher and higher into the sky--strips of blue and red and yellow and orange, and all that artful lettering. He liked their lettering, the Japanese. It made him think of the writing of the old times when people had carefully painted their words on papyrus and on walls.
Why did he turn off the beautiful thoroughfare? Why did he leave behind the crowds?
There it was, the little hotel he'd been seeking. That's where they hid from the world, the pesky young ones, the foolish and blundering blood drinker riffraff.
Ah, yes, and you will burn them now, burn them all. Burn the building. You have the power to do it. The power is inside you here with me.
Was that really what he wanted to do?
"Do as I have told you to do," said the angry voice now in words.
"What do I care about all those blood drinkers hiding in there?" he said aloud. Weren't they simply lost and lonely and dragging themselves through eternity just as he was? Burn them? Why?
"The power," said the being. "You have the power. Look at the building. Let the heat collect in your mind, focus it, then send it forth."
It had been so long since he'd attempted something like that. It was tempting to see if he could do it.
And suddenly he was doing it. Yes. He felt the heat, felt it as if his own head would explode. He saw the facade of the little hotel waver, heard it crackle, and saw the flames erupting everywhere.
"Kill them as they come out!"
Within seconds the hotel was a tower of flame. And they were rushing right towards him, right into the path of the one who was burning them. It was like a game, throwing the beam at one and then another and another. They were each individual torches for an instant, dying quickly to the rainy pavement.
His head ached. He staggered backwards. A woman stood by the entrance sobbing, reaching out to one of the young ones who'd been burnt to the ground. She was old. It would take such heat to burn her. I don't want to. I don't want to do any of this.
"Ah, but you do! Now, lift her out of her pain and her suffering...."
"Yes, such pain and such suffering ..."
He sent the blast at her with all his strength. Throwing up her arms, she threw a blast of her own towards him but her face and arms were already turning black. Her clothes were on fire. Her legs gave out. Ano
ther blast and she was finished and then another and another and only her bones gave off smoke as they melted.
He had to be quick. He had to get those who had escaped from the back.
Through the burning building he ran, easily picking them out when he reemerged into the rain.
Two, three, then a fourth, and there were no more.
He sat slumped against a wall, and the rain soaked through his white shirt.
"Come," said the dictatorial voice. "You are dear to me now. I love you. You have done my will and I will reward you."
"No, get away from me!" he said disgustedly. "I don't do anyone's will."
"Oh, but you have."
"No," he said. He got to his feet, the cloth shoes wet and heavy. Disgustedly he tore them off his feet and threw them away. He walked on and on. He was walking out of this immense city. He was walking away from all this.
"I have work for you in other places," said the being.
"Not for me," he said.
"You betray me."
"Weep by yourself over that. It's nothing to me."
He stopped. He could hear other blood drinkers in the night in far-distant places. He could hear voices screaming. Where were these dreadful cries coming from? He told himself he didn't care.
"I will punish you," said the being, "if you defy me." His voice was angry again. But very soon, as Cyril walked on and on, the creature fell silent. The creature was gone.
Well before morning, he'd reached the open countryside, and he dug deep into the earth to sleep for as long as he could. But the nagging voice had come back to him at sunset. "There isn't much time. You must go to Kyoto. You must destroy them."
He ignored the orders. The voice grew angrier and angrier as it had last night. "I will send another!" the voice threatened. "And some night soon I will punish you."
On he slept. He dreamed of flames but he didn't care. He wasn't doing that anymore, no matter what happened. But sometime during the night he saw the old vampire refuge in Kyoto burning. And he heard those awful screams again.
I will punish you!
In a perfect imitation of American slang, which he'd come to love, he answered, "Good luck with that."
7
The Story of Antoine
HE HAD DIED at the age of eighteen, Born to Darkness in weakness and confusion, beaten, burned, and left for dead along with his maker. In his fragile short human life, he'd played the piano only, studying at the Conservatoire de Paris when he was but ten years old. A genius he'd been called, and, oh, the Paris of those times. Bizet, Saint-Saens, Berlioz, even Franz Liszt--he'd seen them, heard their music, known them all. He might have become one of them. But his brother had betrayed him, fathering a child out of wedlock, and selecting him--a third son, aged seventeen--to take the blame for the scandal. Off to Louisiana he'd been shipped with a fortune that funded his ruin through drink and his nightly attendance at the gambling tables. Only now and then did he vengefully attack the piano in some fashionable parlor or hotel lobby, delighting and confusing happenstance audiences with a riot of broken and violent riffs and incoherent melodies. Taken up by whores and patronesses of the arts alike, he traded upon his looks: jet-black wavy hair, very white skin, and famously deep blue eyes and a baby Cupid's bow mouth that others liked to kiss and touch with their fingertips. He was tall but gangly, fragile looking, but notoriously strong, able to land a punch with ease to break the jaw of anyone who might try to harm him. Fortunately he had never broken his precious piano fingers doing such things, but knowing it well might happen, he'd taken to carrying a knife and a pistol, and he was no stranger either to the rapier and attended, a few times, at least, a fashionable New Orleans fencing establishment.
Mostly, he fell apart, disintegrated, lost things, woke up in strange bedrooms, got sick with tropical fever, or from bad food, or from drinking himself into a stupor. He had no respect for this raw, mad, essentially colonial town. It wasn't Paris, this disgusting American place. It might as well have been Hell for all he cared. If the Devil kept pianos in Hell, what did it matter?
Then Lestat de Lioncourt, that paragon of fashion, who lived in the Rue Royale with his trusted friend Louis de Pointe du Lac and their little ward Claudia, had come into his life with his fabled generosity and swaggering abandon.
Those days. Ah, those days. How beautiful they seemed in retrospect, and how raw and ugly they had been in fact. That crumbling city of New Orleans, the filth of it, the relentless rains, the mosquitoes and the stench of death from the soggy graveyards, the lawless riverfront streets, and that enigmatic gentleman in exile, Lestat, sustaining him, putting gold in his hands, luring him away from the bars and the roulette wheels and urging him to pound the nearest keyboard.
Lestat had purchased for him the finest pianoforte that he could find, a magnificent Broadwood grand, shipped from England, and played at one time by the great Frederic Chopin.
Lestat had brought servants to clean up his flat. Lestat had hired a cook to see that he ate before he drank, and Lestat had told him that he had a gift and that he must believe in it.
Such a charmer, Lestat in his elegant black frock coats and glossy four-in-hands, marching up and down on the antique Savonnerie carpet, urging him on with a wink and a flashing smile, his blond hair bushy and rebellious down to his crisp white collar. He smelled of clean linen, fresh flowers, the spring rain.
"Antoine, you must compose," Lestat had told him. Paper, ink, everything he needed for his writing. And then those ardent embraces, shrill and chilling kisses when oblivious to the silent and devoted servants they lay in the big cypress four-poster bed together beneath the flaming red silk tester. So cold Lestat had seemed yet so rampantly affectionate. Hadn't those kisses now and then hurt with a tiny sting like an insect biting into his throat? What did he care? The man intoxicated him. "Compose for me," he'd whispered in Antoine's ear, and the command imprinted itself on Antoine's heart.
Sometimes he composed for twenty-four hours without stopping--never mind the endless noise from the crowded muddy street outside his windows--then fell down from exhaustion to sleep over the piano itself in a stupor.
Then Lestat in those shining white gloves and with that glistening silver walking stick was there blazing before him, face moist and cheeks ruddy.
"Here, get up now, Antoine. You've slept enough. Play for me."
"Why do you believe in me?" he'd asked.
"Play!" Lestat pointed to the piano keys.
Lestat danced in circles as Antoine played, looking up into the smoky light of the crystal chandelier. "That's it, more, that's it ..."
And then Lestat himself would flop down into the gold fauteuil behind the desk and begin writing with superb speed and accuracy the notes that Antoine was playing. What had happened to all those songs, all those sheets of parchment, all those leather folders of music?
How lovely it had been, those candlelight hours, curtains blowing in the wind and sometimes people gathered on the banquette below to listen to his playing.
Until that awful night when Lestat had come to demand his allegiance.
Scarred, filthy, dressed in rags that reeked of the swamp, Lestat had become a monster. "They tried to kill me," he'd said in a harsh whisper. "Antoine, you must help me!"
Not the precious child, Claudia, not the precious friend, Louis de Pointe du Lac! You cannot mean this. Murderers, those two, the picture-perfect pair who glided through the early evenings as if in some shared dream as they walked the new flagstone pavements?
Then as this ragged and crippled creature had fastened itself to Antoine's throat, Antoine had seen it all in visions, seen the crime itself, seen his lover savaged again and again by the monster child's knife, seen Lestat's body dumped into the swamp, seen him rise. Antoine now knew everything. The Dark Blood had rushed into his body like a burning fluid exterminating every human particle in its path. The music, his own music, rose in his ears in dizzying volume. Only music could describe this ineffable power, this ragi
ng euphoria.
They had been defeated, both of them, when they went against Claudia and Louis--and Antoine had been hideously burned. That is how Antoine learned what it meant to be Born to Darkness. You could suffer burns like that and endure. You could suffer what should have meant death for a human being, and you could go on. Music and pain, they were the twin mysteries of his existence. Even the Dark Blood itself did not obsess him as did music and pain. As he lay on the four-poster beside Lestat, Antoine saw his pain in bright flashing colors, his mouth open in a perpetual moan. I cannot live like this. And yet he didn't want to die, no, never to die, not even now, not even with the craving for human blood driving him out into the night though his body was nothing but pain, pain scraped by the fabric of his shirt, his trousers, even his boots. Pain and blood and music.
For thirty mortal years, he'd lived like a monster, hideous, scarred, preying on the weakest of mortals, hunting in the crowded Irish immigrant slums for his meals. He could make his music without ever touching the keys of a piano. He heard the music in his head, heard it surge and climb as he moved his fingers in the air. The mingled noises of the rat-infested slums, the roaring laughter from a stevedore's tavern, became a new music to him, caught in the low rumble of voices to the right and to the left, or the cries of his victims. Blood. Give me blood. Music I will possess forever.
Lestat had gone to Europe, chasing after them, those two, Claudia and Louis, who had been his family, his friends, his lovers.
But he had been terrified to attempt such a journey. And he had left Lestat at the docks. "Goodbye to you, Antoine." Lestat had kissed him. "Maybe you will have a life here in the New World, the life I wanted." Gold and gold and gold. "Keep the rooms, keep the things I've given you."
But he hadn't been clever like Lestat. He'd had no skill for living like a mortal among mortals. Not with these songs in his head, these symphonies, and the blood ever beckoning. His own legacy he'd squandered, and Lestat's gold was gone too at last, though where or how he could never remember. He had left New Orleans, journeying north, sleeping in the cemeteries as he made his way.