"Well, all that is true," said Gabrielle. "And we are a quarrelsome and independent species and we do need any charismatic leader who is willing to take the helm. But there are other reasons."
She looked at Sevraine.
Sevraine nodded. And Gabrielle went on.
"You have a mortal son there, Lestat, a young man of less than twenty years. His name is Viktor. He knows you are his father. He was born of a mortal woman in Fareed's laboratory, a woman named Flannery Gilman who is now in the Blood. But your son is not in the Blood."
Silence.
Not only did I not speak, I couldn't think. I couldn't reason. I must have looked like someone who has lost his senses. I stared at Gabrielle and then at Sevraine.
I had no words for what I was feeling. I had no way to comprehend the scope of what was going on not in my mind but in my heart. I could feel the eyes of all present on me, but it didn't much matter. I looked at them but I didn't really see them or care about them--Allesandra sitting there staring at me quietly with Bianca beside her, a picture of sympathy and sadness. And Eleni watching me fearfully, with Eugenie all but hiding behind her. And the spirit and the ghost with such emotional expressions. A son. A mortal son. A living breathing son of my flesh. Oh, Fareed, he must have planned it from the start with that enticing bedroom and the warm, sweet-faced Dr. Flannery Gilman so ready with her tender mortal mouth and her hot naked limbs. I'd impregnated her! The possibility had never occurred to me. Not for one second had I thought such a thing possible.
From Sevraine's mind there came a fully realized image of this boy.
He was looking directly at me in this image, a young man with my square face and somewhat short nose, and my unruly blond hair. Those blue eyes seemed my eyes and yet they weren't my eyes. They were his own. That was my mouth, all right, sensuous, and a little large for the face, but it had nothing of the cruelty of my mouth. Just a beautiful young boy, in spite of looking like me, a beautiful young man. The face vanished. And I saw a flash of images now of this young man perhaps as Sevraine had once seen him, striding along an American street, dressed in regular clothes, jeans, a sweater, sneakers, a healthy, glowing young man.
Pain. Unspeakable pain.
It didn't matter who in this world or any other was staring at me, watching me, seeking to share this moment or merely shuddering as I experienced it. Just didn't matter. Because in pain like this one is always alone.
"I have another shock for you," said Sevraine.
I didn't reply.
"There is a young woman with Viktor whom you also love," said Sevraine. "Her name is Rose."
"Rose?" I whispered. "Not my Rose!" This pain was rolling suddenly towards fury. "How in God's name did they get their hands on my Rose?"
"Let me tell you," said Sevraine. "Let me explain." Then slowly in a low voice she told me what had befallen Rose. She told me how my attorneys were trying to reach me, but then I'd been ignoring all "worldly messages of late," and she recounted the details of an assault on Rose, her blindness, the scarring of her face and throat, and how she had cried out for me over and over in her agony, and how Seth had heard that cry, how Fareed had heard it, and how, on my behalf, they had intervened.
Oh, Death, you are so determined to have my beloved Rose. Death, you cannot stop seeking to take my precious Rose.
"The girl was given just enough of the Blood to cure her blindness," said Sevraine. "But never enough to take root in her. Just enough of the Blood to heal her esophagus, heal her skin. But never enough to begin the transformation. She's still fully human and she loves your son, and he loves her."
I think I murmured something like "This is all Fareed's doing," but my heart wasn't in it. I didn't care. I absolutely didn't care. The rage was gone. Only the pain remained. I kept seeing the image of the boy and I needed no one to give me an image of my beloved Rose, my sweet brave Rose, who'd been so happy when I last saw her, my tender, loving Rose whom I'd given up for her sake, knowing that she was now too old to be near me anymore, too old to be confused by what I was. My Rose. And Viktor.
"These things are now commonly known," said Sevraine, "because this boy and this girl have been brought by Fareed and Seth to join the others. And you must go there too. Leave Maharet to her own resources. The meeting is what matters. Whatever happens to Maharet, the Voice will still be the challenge. And tomorrow at sunrise, we must go."
I sat still staring at the surface of the table, thinking of what all this might mean.
A long moment passed and then Eleni said tenderly, "Please, do come with us to join the others. It's past time for us to be there."
I glanced at her, at her eager face and that of Eugenie beside her. And my eyes passed over the strangely expressive faces of Raymond Gallant and then Gremt. How infinitely more human they seemed than the rest of us.
"Listen to me," said Gabrielle impatiently. "You can't conceivably respond to all these revelations now. No one can. But be assured that this girl, Rose, is on the verge of madness as always happens with those who know too much of us. Viktor on the other hand has always known you were his father, and he grew up with his mother's love and knows what she is too. So let's be on our way tomorrow night to resolve this, if nothing else, and then the matter of the Voice."
I nodded, trying not to show a bitter smile. What a hand they had played! Had it been deliberate? Calculating? Didn't much matter in the scheme of things. It was what it was.
"You think these matters are more important than the Voice?" I asked. "You think these matters cannot wait a little longer? I don't know what I think. I can't think. My mind's not made up."
"I think if you return to Maharet," said Gabrielle, "you'll be very disappointed at what you find out. And she may very well destroy you."
"Tell me what you know now!" I said. I was suddenly furious. "Tell me now."
"What matters is what all of us know when we gather," said Gabrielle. She was as angry as I was. "Not what I suspect, or what fragmentary images I've caught or someone else has caught. Don't you understand? We're facing a worse crisis than we did last time, can't you see that? But we have Sevraine, and this ancient one Seth, who's even older than she is, and who knows who else? We should go to them, not to Maharet."
"And you knew I had a son and you never told me," I said suddenly, impulsively, "and you knew what had happened to my Rose."
"Stop, Lestat, please," said Sevraine. "You're hurting my ears. Your mother only found these things out from me and went to fetch you immediately and bring you here as I asked. You have been living in your own well-fortified and solitary world. You gave no hint that any of this concerned you. Now come with us to join the others as we ask."
"I want to find David and Jesse ...," I said.
"David and Jesse have joined the others," said Gremt.
"And what do you know of Maharet right now!" I demanded. I hit the table with my fist.
"I'm not omniscient," said Gremt quietly. "I could leave this body and I could travel there--invisible, silent--easily enough. But I've forsworn that power. I've trained myself to walk and talk and see and hear as a human being. And besides, whatever is happening with Maharet, none of us can change."
I pushed back the chair and rose to my feet. "I have to be alone now," I said. "This is all simply too much. I have to wander out there, be alone.... I don't know what I'll do. We have several hours more to talk about it. I want to be alone. You should go on to New York, that's certain. All of you should go. And you should fight this Voice with all your power. As for me, I don't know."
Sevraine rose and came around the table and took me by the arm.
"All right then," she said. "You go wandering if you must. But I have something that might help you with your meditations, something I arranged especially for you."
She led me out of the room and down a long passage that was covered in soft glittering gold like so much of what I'd already seen. But soon another cruder and unadorned passage led us away from this one and down a l
ong steep rock-cut stairs.
It seemed we were in a labyrinth. And I caught the scent of human beings.
We came finally to a long ramp that led into a small room illuminated only by a couple of thick candles on ledges, and there beyond a wall of iron bars stood a golden-skinned human being staring at me out of the shadows with bitter furious black eyes.
The scent was overpowering, delicious, almost irresistible.
The man began to shake the bars with all his strength and rail at Sevraine in the most vulgar and coarse French I'd ever heard. He hurled one threat after another at her of confederates who would come to rip her limb from limb and visit every erotic abomination on her that he could conceive.
He swore his "brothers" would never let anyone live who had done harm to him, that she didn't know what she had done to herself, and so forth and so on, round now in circles, damning her under the worst words ever created in any language to denounce a female being.
I was fascinated. It had been a long time since I'd encountered anyone so totally given over to evil, and so blatant in his fury. The smell of the sea came off his filthy dungarees and his sweat-soaked denim shirt, and I saw scars cut into his face and into his right arm that had hardened into seams of pure white flesh.
Behind me a heavy door was closed.
The creature and I were alone. I saw the key to his cell on a hook to the right of the gate that held him back, and I took it down while he went on raving and cursing, and I turned it slowly in the lock.
He flung the gate back immediately and lunged at me, his hands moving to my throat.
I let him do this, let him hurl his full force at a body that did not yield even by a quarter of an inch. And there he was, trying to press his fingers into my neck and utterly impotent to make the slightest indentation in my skin and staring into my eyes.
He backed up, calculating, and took another tack. Did I want money? He had plenty of money. All right, he was dealing here with something he hadn't encountered before. Yes, we weren't human. He saw that. But he wasn't stupid. He wasn't a fool. What did we want?
"Tell me," he roared at me in French. His eyes moved feverishly over the ceiling, the floor, the walls. The doors.
"I want you," I said in French. I opened my mouth and ran my tongue under my fangs.
He didn't believe what he saw, of course he didn't believe, that was preposterous that such creatures as that were real. "Stop trying to frighten me!" he roared again.
He fell into a crouch, shoulders hunched, arms at the ready, fingers balled into fists.
"You're enough to take my mind off anything," I said.
I moved closer, sliding my arms around him, sliding them right against that delicious salty sweat, and drove my teeth swiftly into his neck. That's the least painful way to do it, go right for the artery and just let that first pull on his heart quiet his fear.
His soul broke open like a rotten carcass, and all of the filth of his life spent in smuggling and thievery and random murder, always murder, murder after murder, poured out like black viscid crude oil in his blood.
We were on the floor of the cell. He was still alive. I was drinking the last dregs slowly, letting the blood drain from his brain and his internal organs and pulling it towards me with the steady slow cooperation of his powerful heart.
He was a little boy now, a trusting little boy filled with curiosity and dreams and roaming some countryside very like my own fields and slopes in the Auvergne, and there was so much he wanted to know, so much he wanted to fathom, so many things that he would do. He would grow up and discover the answers. He would know. The snow fell suddenly on the place where he was playing, running, jumping, and spinning in circles with his arms out. And he threw his little head back to swallow the falling snow.
The heart stopped.
I lay there for a long moment, still feeling the warmth of his chest against me, the side of his face under me, feeling some last quiver of life pass through his arms.
Then the Voice spoke.
The Voice was there, low, confidential, right there. And the Voice said:
"You see I want to know all those things too. You see, I wanted to know, wanted to know with my whole heart, what is snow? And what is beautiful and what is love? I still want to know! I want to see with your eyes, Lestat, and hear with your ears, and speak with your voice. But you have denied me. You have left me in blindness and misery and you will pay for that."
I climbed to my feet.
"Where are you, Voice?" I asked. "What have you done to Mekare?"
He wept bitterly. "How can you ask me such a question? You, of all the blood drinkers spawned by me and sustained by me. You know how helpless I am inside of her! And for me you have no pity, and only hate."
He was gone.
I tried to anatomize how I knew, what it was I felt, when he left me, what were the tiny indications of his sudden abandonment, but I couldn't really even remember all the tiny little aspects of it. I just knew he was gone.
"I don't despise you, Voice," I said aloud. My voice sounded unnatural in the empty stone chamber. "I have never really despised you. I was guilty of only one thing, not knowing who you really are. You might have told me, Voice. You might have trusted me."
But he was gone, gone to some other part of the great Savage Garden to do mischief, no doubt.
I left the dead man, since there seemed no proper place to dump his bloodless carcass, and I started back through the maze to find the others.
Somewhere along the way, when stone passages had once more given way to brightly painted passages and golden passages, I heard singing.
It was the softest most ethereal singing, words spun out by high clear soprano voices in Latin, one thread of melody interweaving with another, and under this the sounds of what had to be a lyre.
The sounds of running water came to me with the exquisite music, singing--running water, splashing water, and the laughter of blood drinkers. Sevraine laughing. My mother laughing. I smelled the water. I smelled sunlight, green grass in the water. Somehow the freshness and sweetness of the water mingled in my mind with the richly satisfying blood that had just flooded my mouth and my brain. And I could all but see the music in golden ribbons winding through the air.
I came to a large, cavernous, and brightly lighted bath.
Glittering mosaics covered the uneven ceiling and walls, tiny bits of gold and silver and crimson marble, malachite and lapis lazuli and shining obsidian and flakes of glinting glass. Candles burned on their bronze stands.
Two gentle dancing waterfalls fed the large rock-cut basin in which they bathed.
They were all standing in the water--the women--together under the soft sparkling downpour, some naked, some clothed in sheer gowns that had turned transparent with the water, faces glistening, hair slicked into long serpentine streaks of darkness over their shoulders. And in the far-left corner were the singers--three white-robed blood drinkers obviously made in boyhood, singing in high sweet soprano voices, castrati made by the Blood.
I found myself transfixed by the vision of this. The women beckoned me to come into the bath.
The musicians sang on as if blind to all those present, though they were not, each strumming the strings of a small ancient Greek-style lyre.
The room was warm and moist and the light itself was golden from the candles.
I moved forward, stripping off my clothes and joining them in the fresh sweet-smelling pool. They poured the water over me from pink-throated seashells. And I splashed it again and again against my face.
Allesandra, naked, danced with her arms up, singing with the boy sopranos, though in words of Old French, some poetry of her own, and Sevraine, her body frighteningly pale and hard, the water glancing off it as if it were marble, kissed me on the lips.
The sharp yet exquisitely controlled singing pierced me, paralyzed me, as I stood in the cool flowing water. I closed my eyes, and thought, Always remember this. Always remember though agony and fear crouch at
the door. This. The throb of the lyre strings, and these voices weaving like vines together, climbing to heights undreamt of by the logical fearful mind and descending slowly to blend in harmony again.
Through the flashing waterfall I looked at them, these boys, with their round faces and their short curling blond hair; very slightly they swayed with the music and it was the music that they saw, not us, not this place, not this now.
What does it mean to be a singer in the Blood, a musician, to have that purpose, that love affair to carry you through the ages--and to be as happy as all of these creatures seemed to be?
Later on, dressed in fresh garments provided by the mistress of the palace, I passed a long shadowy chamber in which Gremt sat with Raymond Gallant. There was a blood drinker with them, as ancient perhaps as was Sevraine. And other ghosts there as beautifully realized in material bodies as were Gremt and Raymond Gallant.
I was immediately fascinated, but I was also very tired. Almost deliciously tired.
One of these ghosts rose to greet me and beckoned for me to wait as I stood in the door.
I backed up into the passage as this phantom moved out of the room and towards me, not out of fear so much as overwhelming reluctance. I knew where I stood with any human on the planet; I knew what I faced with any blood drinker. But I did not begin to know what I faced with a self-possessed ghost in a solid body.
He stood before me, smiling, the light from the shadowy conference room illuminating his rather remarkable face. Smooth forehead, Grecian features, and long ashen-blond hair.
He was dressed in a long simple black silk soutane. And it was a real garment, made of raw silk. This skin was not real, no, and the organs within were simulated well but not real, and who knew what soul lay behind these cheerful, friendly eyes?
Once again, I felt keenly that these spirits or ghosts clothed in bodies of their own making were exactly like us. They were incarnated souls as we were incarnated souls.
"I've waited a long time to beg your forgiveness for what I did to you," he said in French. "I have hoped and prayed always that you were glad of it finally, glad to be living and breathing now, hard as it's been for you on the Devil's Road."