The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice, ebook, ebook.1400, Temp 3
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//-->THE VAMPIRE ARMANDTHE VAMPIRE CHRONICLESANNE RICEJesus, speaking to Mary Magdalene:Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to myFather: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto myFather, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN 20:17PART 1BODY and BLOODTHEY SAID a child had died in the attic. Her clothes had been discoveredin the wall. I wanted to go up there, and to lie down near the wall, andbe alone.They'd seen her ghost now and then, the child. But none of thesevampires could see spirits, really, at least not the way that I couldsee them. No matter. It wasn't the company of the child I wanted. It wasto be in that place.Nothing more could be gained from lingering near Lestat. I'd come.I'd fulfilled my purpose. I couldn't help him.The sight of his sharply focused and unchanging eyes unnerved me, andI was quiet inside and full of love for those nearest me-my humanchildren, my dark-haired little Benji and my tender willowy Sybelle- butI was not strong enough just yet to take them away.I left the chapel.I didn't even take note of who was there. The whole convent was nowthe dwelling place of vampires. It was not an unruly place, or aneglected place, but I didn't notice who remained in the chapel when Ileft.Lestat lay as he had all along, on the marble floor of the chapel infront of the huge crucifix, on his side, his hands slack, the left handjust below the right hand, its fingers touching the marble lightly, asif with a purpose, when there was no purpose at all. The fingers of hisright hand curled, making a little hollow in the palm where the lightfell, and that too seemed to have a meaning, but there was no meaning.This was simply the preternatural body lying there without will oranimation, no more purposeful than the face, its expression almostdefiantly intelligent, given that months had passed in which Lestat hadnot moved.The high stained-glass windows were dutifully draped for him beforesunrise. At night, they shone with all the wondrous candles scatteredabout the fine statues and relics which filled this once sanctified andholy place. Little mortal children had heard Mass under this high covedroof; a priest had sung out the Latin words from an altar.It was ours now. It belonged to him-Lestat, the man who laymotionless on the marble floor.Man. Vampire. Immortal. Child of Darkness. Any and all are excellentwords for him.Looking over my shoulder at him, I never felt so much like a child.That's what I am. I fill out the definition, as if it were encoded inme perfectly, and there had never been any other genetic design.I was perhaps seventeen years old when Marius made me into a vampire.I had stopped growing by that time. For a year, I'd been five feet sixinches. My hands are as delicate as those of a young woman, and I wasbeardless, as we used to say in that time, the years of the sixteenthcentury. Not a eunuch, no, not that, most certainly, but a boy.It was fashionable then for boys to be as beautiful as girls. Onlynow does it seem something worthwhile, and that's because I love theothers-my own: Sybelle with her woman's breasts and long girlish limbs,and Benji with his round intense little Arab face.I stood at the foot of the stairs. No mirrors here, only the highbrick walls stripped of their plaster, walls that were old only forAmerica, darkened by the damp even inside the convent, all textures andelements here softened by the simmering summers of New Orleans and herclammy crawling winters, green winters I call them because the treeshere are almost never bare.I was born in a place of eternal winter when one compares it to thisplace. No wonder in sunny Italy I forgot the beginnings altogether, andfashioned my life out of the present of my years with Marius. "I don'tremember." It was a condition of loving so much vice, of being soaddicted to Italian wine and sumptuous meals, and even the feel of thewarm marble under my bare feet when the rooms of the palazzo weresinfully, wickedly heated by Marius's exorbitant fires.His mortal friends ... human beings like me at that time ... scoldedconstantly about these expenditures: firewood, oil, candles. And forMarius only the finest candles of beeswax were acceptable. Everyfragrance was significant.Stop these thoughts. Memories can't hurt you now. You came here for areason and now you have finished, and you must find those you love, youryoung mortals, Benji and Sybelle, and you must go on.Life was no longer a theatrical stage where Banquo's ghost came againand again to seat himself at the grim table.My soul hurt.Up the stairs. Lie for a little while in this brick convent where thechild's clothes were found. Lie with the child, murdered here in thisconvent, so say the rumormongers, the vampires who haunt these hallsnow, who have come to see the great Vampire Lestat in his Endymion-likesleep.I felt no murder here, only the tender voices of nuns.I went up the staircase, letting my body find its human weight andhuman tread.After five hundred years, I know such tricks. I could frighten allthe young ones-the hangers-on and the gawkers-just as surely as theother ancient ones did it, even the most modest, uttering words toevince their telepathy, or vanishing when they chose to leave, or nowand then even making the building tremble with their power-aninteresting accomplishment even with these walls eighteen inches thickwith cypress sills that will never rot.He must like the fragrances here, I thought. Marius, where is he?Before I had visited Lestat, I had not wanted to talk very much toMarius, and had spoken only a few civil words when I left my treasuresin his charge.After all, I had brought my children into a menagerie of the Undead.Who better to safeguard them than my beloved Marius, so powerful thatnone here dared question his smallest request.There is no telepathic link between us naturally-Marius made me, I amforever his fledgling-but as soon as this occurred to me, I realizedwithout the aid of this telepathic link that I could not feel thepresence of Marius in the building. I didn't know what had happened inthat brief interval when I knelt down to look at Lestat. I didn't knowwhere Marius was. I couldn't catch the familiar human scents of Benji orSybelle. A little stab of panic paralyzed me.I stood on the second story of the building. I leaned against thewall, my eyes settling with determined calm on the deeply varnishedheart pine floor. The light made pools of yellow on the boards.Where were they, Benji and Sybelle? What had I done in bringing themhere, two ripe and glorious humans? Benji was a spirited boy of twelve,Sybelle, a womanling of twenty-five. What if Marius, so generous in hisown soul, had carelessly let them out of his sight?"I'm here, young one." The voice was abrupt, soft, welcome.My Maker stood on the landing just below me, having come up the stepsbehind me, or more truly, with his powers, having placed himself there,covering the preceding distance with silent and invisible speed."Master," I said with a little trace of a smile. "I was afraid forthem for a moment." It was an apology. "This place makes me sad."He nodded. "I have them, Armand," he said. "The city seethes withmortals. There's food enough for all the vagabonds wandering here. Noone will hurt them. Even if I weren't here to say so, no one woulddare."It was I who nodded now. I wasn't so sure, really. Vampires are bytheir very nature perverse and do wicked and terrible things simply forthe sport of it. To kill another's mortal pet would be a worthyentertainment for some grim and alien creature, skirting the fringeshere, drawn by remarkable events."You're a wonder, young one," he said to me smiling. Young one! Whoelse would call me this but Marius, my Maker, and what is five hundredyears to him? "You went into the sun, child," he continued with the samelegible concern written on his kind face. "And you lived to tell thetale.""Into the sun, Master?" I questioned his words. But I myself did notwant to reveal any more. I did not want to talk yet, to tell of what hadhappened, the legend of Veronica's Veil and the Face of Our Lordemblazoned upon it, and the morning when I had given up my soul withsuch perfect happiness. What a fable it was.He came up the steps to be near me, but kept a polite distance. Hehas always been the gentleman, even before there was such a word. Inancient Rome, they must have had a term for such a person, infalliblygood mannered, and considerate as a point of honor, and whollysuccessful at common courtesy to rich and poor alike. This was Marius,and it had always been Marius, insofar as I could know.He let his snow-white hand rest on the dull satiny banister. He worea long shapeless cloak of gray velvet, once perfectly extravagant, nowdownplayed with wear and rain, and his yellow hair was long likeLestat's hair, full of random light and unruly in the damp, and evenstudded with drops of dew from outside, the same dew clinging to hisgolden eyebrows and darkening his long curling eyelashes around hislarge cobalt-blue eyes.There was something altogether more Nordic and icy about him thanthere was about Lestat, whose hair tended more to golden, for all itsluminous highlights, and whose eyes were forever prismatic, drinking upthe colors around him, becoming even a gorgeous violet with theslightest provocation from the worshipful outside world.In Marius, I saw the sunny skies of the northern wilderness, eyes ofsteady radiance which rejected any outside color, perfect portals to hisown most constant soul."Armand," he said. "I want you to come with me.""Where is that, Master, come where?" I asked. I too wanted to becivil. He had always, even after a struggle of wits, brought such finerinstincts out of me."To my house, Armand, where they are now, Sybelle and Benji. Oh,don't fear for them for a second. Pandora's with them. They are ratherastonishing mortals, brilliant, remarkably different, yet alike. Theylove you, and they know so much and have come with you rather a longway."I flushed with blood and color; the warmth was stinging andunpleasant, and then as the blood danced back away from the surface ofmy face, I felt cooler and strangely enervated that I felt anysensations at all.It was a shock being here and I wanted it to be over."Master, I don't know who I am in this new life," I said gratefully."Reborn? Confused?" I hesitated, but there was no use stopping it."Don't ask me to stay here just now. Maybe some time when Lestat ishimself again, maybe when enough time has passed-. I don't know forcertain, only that I can't accept your kind invitation now."He gave me a brief accepting nod. With his hand he made a littleacquiescent gesture. His old gray cloak had slipped off one shoulder. Heseemed not to care about it. His thin black wool clothes were neglected,lapels and pockets trimmed in a careless gray dust. That was not rightfor him.He had a big shock of white silk at his throat that made his paleface seem more colored and human than it otherwise would. But the silkwas torn as if by brambles. In sum, he haunted the world in theseclothes, rather than was dressed in them. They were for a stumbler, notmy old Master.I think he knew I was at a loss. I was looking up at the gloom aboveme. I wanted to reach the attic of this place, the half-concealedclothing of the dead child. I wondered at this story of the dead child.I had the impertinence to let my mind drift, though he was waiting.He brought me back with his gentle words:"Sybelle and Benji will be with me when you want them," he said. "Youcan find us. We aren't far. You'll hear the Appassionato when you wantto hear it." He smiled."You've given her a piano," I said. I spoke of golden Sybelle. I hadshut out the world from my preternatural hearing, and I didn't want justyet to unstop my ears even for the lovely sound of her playing, which Ialready missed overly much.As soon as we'd entered the convent, Sybelle had seen a piano andasked in a whisper at my ear if she could play it. It was not in thechapel where Lestat lay, but off in another long empty room. I had toldher it wasn't quite proper, that it might disturb Lestat as he laythere, and we couldn't know what he thought, or what he felt, or if hewas anguished and trapped in his own dreams."Perhaps when you come, you'll stay for a while," Marius said."You'll like the sound of her playing my piano, and maybe then we'lltalk together, and you can rest with us, and we can share the house foras long as you like."I didn't answer."It's palatial in a New World sort of way," he said with a littlemockery in his smile. "It's not far at all. I have the most spaciousgardens and old oaks, oaks far older than those even out there on theAvenue, and all the windows are doors. You know how I like it that way.It's the Roman style. The house is open to the spring rain, and thespring rain here is like a dream.""Yes, I know," I whispered. "I think it's falling now, isn't it?" Ismiled."Well, I'm rather spattered with it, yes," he said almost gaily. "Youcome when you want to. If not tonight, then tomorrow ...""Oh, I'll be there tonight," I said. I didn't want to offend him, not
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