"I thank you for welcoming me here," I said.
"You come to us anytime that you wish," he said. He gave me his hand. I stared into his eyes, and I felt strongly again that I did see his resemblance to Akasha, though she had been far more delicate, far more conventionally beautiful. He had a fierce and cold light in his eyes.
He smiled.
"I wish I had something to give you," I said. "I wish I had something to offer you in return."
"Oh, but you gave us much."
"What? Those samples?" I scoffed. "I meant hospitality, warmth, something. I am passing through. I've been passing through for the longest time."
"You did give us both something else," he said. "Though you do not know it."
"What?"
"From your mind we learned that what you wrote of the Queen of the Damned was true. We had to know if you described truthfully what you saw when my mother died. You see, we could not entirely fathom it. It is not so easy to decapitate one so powerful. We are so strong. Surely you know this."
"Well, yes, but even the oldest flesh can be pierced, sliced." I stopped. I swallowed. I couldn't speak of this in such a crude and unfeeling way. I couldn't think of that spectacle again--her severed head, and the body, the body struggling to get to the head, arms reaching.
"And now you do know," I said. I took a deep breath and banished all that from my mind. "I described it precisely."
He nodded. A dark shadow passed over his face. "We can always be dispatched in that way," he said. He narrowed his eyes as if reflecting. "Decapitation. Surer than immolation when we're speaking of the ancient ones, of the most ancient...."
A silence fell between us.
"I loved her, you know," I said. "I loved her."
"Yes, I do know," he said, "and, you see, I did not. And so this doesn't matter to me very much. What matters much more is that I love you."
I was deeply moved. But I couldn't find words to say what I wanted so much to say. I put my arms around him, and kissed him.
"We'll see each other again," I said.
"Yes, that's my devout wish," he whispered.
Years later, when I came searching for them again, hungering for them, desperate to know if they were all right, I couldn't find them. In fact, I never actually found them again.
I didn't dare to send out a telepathic call for them. I had always kept my knowledge of them tightly locked in my heart, out of fear for them.
And for a long time I lived in terror that Maharet and Mekare had destroyed them.
Sometime later, a few years into the new century, I did something that was rather unusual for me. I'd been brooding over how Akasha died, thinking about the mystery of how we could so easily be destroyed by decapitation. I went into the shop of a specialist in antique armor and weaponry and hired him to make a weapon for me. This was in Paris.
I'd designed the weapon myself. It looked on paper like a medieval horseman's ax, with a narrow two-foot handle and a half-moon blade with a length of maybe twelve inches. I wanted the handle to be weighted, as heavy as the craftsman could make it. And that blade, it had to be weighted too but deadly sharp. I wanted the sharpest metal on earth, whatever it was. There was to be a hook and a leather thong on the end of the handle, just like in medieval times, so I could wear that thong around my wrist, or carry the ax blade down beneath one of my long frock coats.
The craftsman produced a beauty. He warned me it was too heavy for a man to comfortably swing. I wasn't going to like it. I laughed. It was perfect. The gleaming crescent-shaped blade could slice a piece of ripe fruit in half or a silk scarf blowing in the breeze. And it was heavy enough to destroy a tender tree in the forest with one powerful swing.
After that, I kept my little battle-ax near at hand, and often wore it, hung from a button inside my coat, when I went out roaming. Its weight was nothing to me.
I knew I wouldn't have too much of a chance against the Fire Gift from an immortal like Seth or Maharet or Mekare. But I could use the Cloud Gift to escape. And in a face-to-face confrontation with other immortals, with this ax I'd have a terrific advantage. If used with the element of surprise it could probably take down anyone. But then how do you surprise the very ancient ones? Well, I had to try to protect myself, didn't I?
I don't like being at the mercy of others. I don't like being at the mercy of God. I polished and sharpened the ax now and then.
I worried a lot about Seth and Fareed.
I heard tell of them once in New York, and another time in New Mexico. But I couldn't find them. At least they were alive. At least the twins hadn't destroyed them. Well, maybe then the twins would not.
And as the years passed, there were more and more indications that Maharet and Mekare thought little or not at all about the world of the Undead, which leads me now into my meeting with Jesse and David two years ago.
4
Trouble in the Talamasca and in the Great Family
BENJI HAD BEEN broadcasting for quite a long while by the time I finally met Jesse Reeves and David Talbot in Paris.
I'd overheard David's telepathic plea to the vampire Jesse Reeves to come to him. It was something of a coded message. Only someone who knew that both blood drinkers had once been members in the ancient Order of the Talamasca would have understood it--David calling to his red-haired fellow scholar to please meet with her old mentor, if she would be so kind, who'd been searching for her in vain, with news to share of their old compatriots. He'd gone so far as to reference a cafe on the Left Bank for a meeting, a place they'd known in earlier years, "those sunny times," and vowed he'd be on the watch for her nightly until he saw her or heard from her.
I was shocked by all this. In my wanderings, I'd assumed always that Jesse and David were fast companions, still studying together in the ancient archives of Maharet's secret jungle compound, which she shared with her twin sister in Indonesia. It had been years since I'd visited the compound, but I had had it in my mind to go there sometime soon due to the troubles I was suffering in my heart, and my general doubts about my own stamina to survive the misery I was now enduring. Also, I'd been very concerned that Benji's persistent broadcasts to "the vampire world" might eventually rile Maharet and draw her out of her retreat to punish Benji. Maharet could be provoked. I knew that firsthand. After my encounter with Memnoch, I'd provoked her and drawn her out. I worried about that more than I cared to admit to myself. Benji, the nuisance.
And now this, David searching for Jesse as if he hadn't seen her in years, as if he no longer knew where Maharet or Mekare could be found.
I had half a mind to go looking for the twins first. And finally I did.
I took to the skies easily enough and went south, discovering the spot and discovering that it had long been abandoned.
It was chilling to walk through the ruins. Maharet had once had many stone rooms here, gated gardens, screened-in areas where she and her sister could roam in solitude. There had been a bevy of native mortal servants, generators, satellite dishes, and even cooling machines, and all the comforts the modern world could provide in such a remote spot. And David had told me of the libraries, of the shelves of ancient scrolls and tablets, of his hours of speaking to Maharet about the worlds she'd witnessed.
Well, it was ruined and overgrown, and some of the rooms had been intentionally knocked down, and there were old tunnels down into the earth which were now half caved in with rocks and dirt, and the jungle had swallowed a wilderness of rusted electrical equipment. All traces of human or vampiric habitation had been obliterated.
So that meant the twins had vanished from here and not even David Talbot knew where they were, David, who had been so fascinated and fearless with the twins, so eager to learn what they had to teach.
And now David was calling to Jesse Reeves and begging for a meeting in Paris.
Red-haired confidante, I must see you, I must discover why it is I cannot find you.
Now understand I made David a vampire, so I can't hear his telepat
hic messages directly, no, but I caught them from other minds as so often happens.
As for Jesse, she was a fledgling vampire, yes, made the night of my travesty of a rock concert in San Francisco some decades before. But she'd been made by her beloved aunt Maharet, a true ancestor of hers, and a vampiric guardian, whom as I've explained had some of the oldest and most potent Blood in the world. So Jesse was no ordinary fledgling by any means.
David's call was going out over and over again, with the intelligence that he'd haunt the Left Bank till Jesse showed up there.
Well, I decided I'd haunt it too until I found David or both of them.
I headed for Paris to a suite I'd maintained for years, in the gorgeous Hotel Plaza Athenee in the Avenue Montaigne, the closets stocked with a splendid wardrobe (as if that was going to hide the crumbling ruin which I had become), and I prepared to stay in residence and search until David and Jesse appeared. The safe in that suite held all the usual papers, plastic bank cards, and currency I'd need for a comfortable stay in the capital. And I brought with me a cell phone I'd recently had my attorneys obtain for me. I didn't want to greet Jesse or David as the ragged, dusty, windblown suicidal vagabond. I really was no longer that in spirit, and though I had scant interest in all things material, I felt more at ease in the capital as a member of human society.
It was good to be back in Paris, better than I expected, with all that dizzying life around me, and the magnificent lights of the Champs-Elysees, to be drifting through the galleries of the Louvre again in the early hours of the morning, or haunting the Pompidou or just walking the old streets of the Marais. I spent hours in Sainte-Chappelle, and in the Musee de Cluny loving the old medieval walls of the place, so like the buildings I had known when I was a living boy.
Over and over I heard the misbegotten blood drinkers near at hand, warring with one another, playing cat and mouse in the alleyways, harassing and torturing their mortal victims with a viciousness that astonished me.
But they were a cowardly bunch. And they did not detect my presence. Oh, now and then they knew an old one was passing. But they never got close enough to confirm their suspicions. In fact they fled at the sound of my heartbeat.
Over and over, I got those disconcerting flashes of olden times, my times, when there had been bloody executions in the Place de Greve, and even the most popular thoroughfares had run with mud and filth, and the rats had owned the capital as surely as humankind. Gasoline fumes owned it now.
But mostly, I had to admit I felt good. I even went to the grand Palais Garnier, for a performance of Balanchine's Apollo, and wandered the magnificent foyer and stairway at my leisure, loving the marble, the columns, the gilt, the soaring ceilings as much as the music. Paris, my capital, Paris, where I'd died and been reborn, was buried beneath the great nineteenth-century monuments I beheld around me, but it was still Paris where I'd suffered the worst defeat of my immortal life. Paris where I might live again every night if I could overcome my own tiresome misery.
I didn't have long to wait for Jesse and David.
The telepathic cacophony of the fledglings let me know that David had been seen in the streets of the Left Bank, and within hours they were singing songs of Jesse as well.
I was tempted to send out a warning blast to the fledglings to leave the pair entirely alone, but I did not want to break the silence I'd maintained for so long.
It was a chilly night in September, and I soon spotted the pair behind glass, in a noisy crowded brasserie called the Cafe Cassette in the Rue de Rennes. They had just seen each other as Jesse approached David's table. I stood concealed in a dark doorway across the way, spying on them, confident they knew someone was out there, but not me.
Meanwhile the fledglings were darting up, photographing them apparently with cell phones that looked like the slab of glass given to me by my attorneys, and then tearing away as fast as they could, without David or Jesse giving them the slightest acknowledgment.
This sent a stab through me, as I knew I'd be photographed too the moment I made my approach. This is the way it is with us now. This was what Benji had been talking about. This was what was happening with the Undead. There was no avoiding it.
I continued to listen and watch.
Now David isn't a vampire in the body into which he was born. The notorious Body Thief I encountered years ago was largely responsible for that, and when I brought David over into Darkness, as we so quaintly put it, he was a seventy-four-year-old man inhabiting a young, robust, dark-haired, and dark-eyed male body. So that is how he looks and how he will always look, but in my heart of hearts he remains David--my old mortal friend, once the gentle gray-haired Superior General of the Talamasca, and my partner in crime, my ally in my battle against the Body Thief--my forgiving fledgling.
As for Jesse Reeves, Maharet's near-incomparable blood had made her a formidable monster. She was a tall, thin woman, with bones like a bird, and rippling light red hair down to her shoulders, whose fierce eyes always regarded the world from an uncommitted remove and a deep isolation. She had an oval face, and looked far too chaste and ethereal to be what anyone would call beautiful. In fact, she had the neuter-gender quality of an angel.
She had come to the meeting in refined safari wear with pressed khaki jacket and pants, and there sat David beaming when he saw her, the British gentleman in gray Donegal tweed with a brown suede vest and elbow patches. He rose to take her in his arms, and at once they fell to confiding in one another in hushed whispers that I could easily hear from my shadowy hiding place.
Well, I could stand this for maybe three minutes. Then the pain was just too much. I almost fled. After all, I'd given up on all this, had I not?
But then I knew I had to see them, had to hold them each in my arms, had to put my heart close to their hearts. So I plunged across the rainy street and into the cafe and sat down right beside them.
There was a sudden rush of paparazzi blood drinkers from doorways here and there, and they massed beyond the glass to take the inevitable pictures--It's Lestat--. And then they vanished.
David and Jesse had seen me before I was halfway there and David rushed to meet me and threw his arms around me. Jesse hugged both of us. I was lost for a moment to the beating of their hearts, to the subtle scents rising from their hair and skin, and the sheer softness of affection emanating from the firmest of touches. Mon Dieu, why had I ever thought this was a good idea!
Now came all the tears and recriminations, along with more embraces of course, and the tender fragrant kisses, and Jesse's lovely soft hair against my cheek again and David's strict disapproving eyes fixing me mercilessly even though there were blood tears on his face and he had to wipe at them with one of his perfect linen handkerchiefs.
"Okay, we're getting out of here," I said, and headed for the door with both of them struggling to keep up with me.
The hovering paparazzi vampires shot away in all directions, except for one intrepid young female with an actual camera flashing away as she danced backwards in front of us.
I had a car waiting to take us to the Plaza Athenee, and we were silent for the short trip, though it was the strangest and most sensuous experience to be with them, so close, in the backseat of the car, pressing on through the rain with the dim lights blurred in the downpour and the paparazzi following us. I felt pain, being so close to them, and so glad of it. I didn't want them to know how I felt; indeed, I didn't want anyone to know how I felt; I didn't want to know how I felt. So I grew hard and quiet and stared out the windows as Paris was rolling by, with all the endless undying energy of a great capital around us.
Halfway home, I threatened the paparazzi streaking on both sides with immolation if they didn't scatter now. And that did it.
The sumptuous wallpapered living room of my suite was a perfect sanctuary.
We were soon settled under the soft electric lights in the bland but comfortable melange of eighteenth-century and modern-style sofas and chairs. I loved the comfort of these stur
dy furnishings and relished the cabriole legs and bits of brass ormolu and the satin gloss of fruitwood tables and chests.
"Look, I'm not making any excuses for being in exile," I said at once, speaking my usual rough brash brand of English. "I'm here now and that's enough and if I want to tell you what I've been doing all these years, well, I'll write a damned book about it." But I was so glad to be with them. Even yelling at them was a sublime pleasure, instead of merely thinking about them and missing them and longing for them and wondering about them.
"Of course," David said sincerely, his eyes suddenly rimmed in red. "I'm simply glad to see you, that's all. The whole world's glad to know you're alive. You'll know that soon enough."
I was about to say something sharp and unkind when I realized that indeed "the whole world" would know soon enough with all those mavericks out there disseminating their iPhone images and videos. The initial telepathic blast must have been like a meteor crashing into the sea.
"Don't underestimate your own fame," I said under my breath.
Well, we'd be gone from here soon enough. Or I'd tough it out and go on enjoying Paris in spite of the little pests. But Jesse was talking now in that cool American-British voice of hers, drawing me back into the room.
"Lestat, it's never been more important," Jesse said, "that we come together." She looked like a nun with a ragged red veil of hair.
"And why is that?" I demanded. "How can we change what's happening out there? Wasn't it always like this, more or less, I mean what has changed really? It must have been this way before."
"A great deal has changed, apparently," she replied, but not argumentatively. "But there are things I must confide in you and in David, because I don't know where else to go or what to do. I was so glad when I realized David was looking for me. I might never have had the courage to come to you on my own--either of you. David, let me speak first, while I have the courage. Then you can explain what it is you want to tell me. It's about the Talamasca, I understand. But for now the Talamasca is not our greatest concern."
"What is it then, dearest?" David asked.