Rice, Anne - Vampire Chronicles 05 - Memnoch The Devil

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Prologue

LESTAT here. You know who I am? Then skip the next few

paragraphs. For those whom I have not met before, I want this

to be love at first sight.

Behold: your hero for the duration, a perfect imitation of a blond,

blue-eyed, six-foot Anglo-Saxon male. A vampire, and one of the

strongest you'll ever encounter. My fangs are too small to be noticed

unless I want them to be; but they're very sharp, and I cannot go for

more than a few hours without wanting human blood.

Of course, I don't need it that often. And just how often I do need

it, I don't know, because I've never put it to the test.

I'm monstrously strong. I can take to the air. I can hear people

talking on the other side of the city or even the globe. I can read

minds; I can bind with spells.

I'm immortal. I've been virtually ageless since 1789.

Am I unique? By no means. There are some twenty other vampires

in the world of whom I know. Half of these I know intimately;

one half of those I love.

Add to this twenty a good two hundred vagabonds and strangers

of whom I know nothing but now and then hear something; and for

good measure another thousand secretive immortals, roaming about

in human guise.

Men, women, children—any human being can become a vampire.

All it takes is a vampire willing to bring you into it, to suck out most

of your blood, and then let you take it back, mixed with his or her

own. It's not all that simple; but if you survive, you'll live forever.

While you're young, you'll thirst unbearably, probably have to kill

each night. By the time you're a thousand years old, you'll look and

sound wise, even if you were a kid when you started, and you will

drink and kill because you cannot resist it, whether you need it anymore or not.

If you live longer than that, and some do, who knows? You'll get

tougher, whiter, ever more monstrous. You'll know so much about

suffering that you will go through rapid cycles of cruelty and kindness, insight and maniacal

blindness. You'll probably go mad. Then

you'll be sane again. Then you may forget who you are.

I myself combine the best of vampiric youth and old age. Only

two hundred years old, I have been for various reasons granted the

strength of the ancients. I have a modern sensibility but a dead aristocrat's impeccable taste. I know

exactly who I am. I am rich. I am

beautiful. I can see my reflection in mirrors. And in shopwindows. I

love to sing and to dance.

What do I do? Anything that I please.

Think about it. Is it enough to make you want to read my story?

Have you perhaps read my stories of the vampires before?

Here's the catch: it doesn't matter here that I'm a vampire. It is

not central to the tale. It's just a given, like my innocent smile and

soft, purring French-accented voice and graceful way of sauntering

down the street. It comes with the package. But what happened here

could have happened to a human being; indeed, it surely has happened to humans, and it will

happen to them again.

We have souls, you and I.

We want to know things; we share the

same earth, rich and verdant and fraught with perils. We don't either of us

know what it means to die, no matter what we might say

to the contrary. It's a cinch that if we did, I wouldn't be writing and

you wouldn't be reading this book.

What does matter very much, as we go into this story together, is

that I have set for myself the task of being a hero in this world. I

maintain myself as morally complex, spiritually tough, and aesthetically relevant

a being of blazing insight and impact, a guy with

things to say to you.

So if you read this, read it for that reason that Lestat is talking

again, that he is frightened, that he is searching desperately for the

lesson and for the song and for the raison d'etre, that he wants to

understand his own story and he wants you to understand it, and that

it is the very best story he has right now to tell.

If that's not enough, read something else.

If it is, then read on. In chains, to my friend and my scribe, I dictated these words. Come with me.

Just listen to me. Don't leave me

alone.

I SAW him when he came through the front doors. Tall, solidly built, dark brown hair and eyes,

skin still fairly dark because it had been dark when I'd made him a vampire. Walking a little too

fast, but basically passing for a human being. My beloved David.

I was on the stairway. The grand stairway, one might say. It was one of those very opulent old

hotels, divinely overdone, full of crimson and

gold, and rather pleasant. My Victim had picked it. I hadn't.

My victim was dining with his daughter. And I'd picked up from my

victim's mind that this was where he always met his daughter in New

York, for the simple reason that St. Patrick's Cathedral was across

the street.

David saw me at once a slouching, blond, long-haired youth,

bronze face and hands, the usual deep violet sunglasses over my eyes,

hair presentably combed for once, body tricked out in a dark-blue,

doubled-breasted Brooks Brothers suit.

I saw him smile before he could stop himself. He knew my vanity,

and he probably knew that in the early nineties of the twentieth century,

Italian fashion had flooded the market with so much shapeless,

hangy, bulky, formless attire that one of the most erotic and flattering

garments a man could choose was the well-tailored navy-blue

Brooks Brothers suit.

Besides, a mop of flowing hair and expert tailoring are always a

potent combination. Who knows that better than I?

I didn't mean to harp on the clothes! To hell with the clothes. It's

just I was so proud of myself for being spiffed up and full of gorgeous

contradictions a picture of long locks, the impeccable tailoring, and

a regal manner of slumping against the railing and sort of blocking

stairs.

He came up to me at once. He smelled like the deep winter out-side

where people were slipping in the frozen streets, and snow had

turned to filth in the gutters. His face had the subtle preternatural

gleam which only I could detect, and love, and properly appreciate,

and eventually kiss.

We walked together onto the carpeted mezzanine.

Momentarily, I hated it that he was two inches taller than me. But

I was so glad to see him, so glad to be near him. And it was warm in

here, and shadowy and vast, one of the places where people do not

stare at others.

"You've come," I said. "I didn't think you would."

"Of course," he scolded, the gracious British accent breaking

softly from the young dark face, giving me the usual shock. This was

an old man in a young man's body, recently made a vampire, and by

me, one of the most powerful of our remaining kind.

"What did you expect?" he said, tete-a-tete. "Armand told me

you were calling me. Maharet told me."

"Ah, that answers my first question." I wanted to kiss him, and

suddenly I did put out my arms, rather tentatively and politely so that

he could get away if he wanted, and when he let me hug him, when he

returned the warmth, I felt a happiness I hadn't experienced in

months.

Perhaps I hadn't experienced it since I had left him, with Louis.

We had been in some nameless jungle place, the three of us, when we

agreed to part, and that had been a year ago.

"Your first question?" he asked, peering at me very closely, sizing

me up perhaps, doing everything a vampire can do to measure the

mood and mind of his maker, because a vampire cannot read his

maker's mind, any more than the maker can read the mind of the

fledgling.

And there we stood divided, laden with preternatural gifts, both

fit and rather full of emotion, and unable to communicate except in

the simplest and best way, perhaps with words.

"My first question," I began to explain, to answer, "was simply

going to be: Where have you been, and have you found the others,

and did they try to hurt you? All that rot, you know how I broke the

rules when I made you, et cetera."

"All that rot," he mocked me, the French accent I still possessed,

now coupled with something definitely American. "What rot."

"Come on," I said. "Let's go into the bar there and talk. Obvi-

ously no one has done anything to you. I didn't think they could or

they would, or that they'd dare. I wouldn't have let you slip off into

the world if I'd thought you were in danger."

He smiled, his brown eyes full of gold light for just an instant.

"Didn't you tell me this twenty-five times, more or less, before we

parted company?"

We found a small table, cleaving to the wall. The place was half

crowded, the perfect proportion exactly. What did we look like? A

couple of young men on the make for mortal men or women? I don't

care.

"No one has harmed me," he said, "and no one has shown the

slightest interest in it."

Someone was playing a piano, very tenderly for a hotel bar, I

thought. And it was something by Erik Satie. What luck.

"The tie," he said, leaning forward, white teeth flashing, fangs

completely hidden, of course. "This, this big mass of silk around

your neck! This is not Brooks Brothers!" He gave a soft teasing

laugh. "Look at you, and the wing-tip shoes! My, my. What's going

on in your mind? And what is this all about?"

The bartender threw a hefty shadow over the small table, and

murmured predictable phrases that were lost to me in my excitement

and in the noise.

"Something hot," David said. It didn't surprise me. "You know,

rum punch or some such, whatever you can heat up."

I nodded and made a little gesture to the indifferent fellow that I

would take the same thing.

Vampires always order hot drinks. They aren't going to drink

them; but they can feel the warmth and smell them if they're hot, and

that is so good.

David looked at me again. Or rather this familiar body with David

inside looked at me. Because for me, David would always be the elderly

human I'd known and treasured, as well as this magnificent

burnished shell of stolen flesh that was slowly being shaped by his

expressions and manner and mood.

Dear Reader, he switched human bodies before I made him a

vampire, worry no more. It has nothing to do with this story.

"Something's following you again?" he asked. "This is what Armand told me.

So did Jesse."

"Where did you see them?"

"Armand?" he asked. "A complete accident. In Paris. He was just

walking on the street. He was the first one I saw."

"He didn't make any move to hurt you?"

"Why would he? Why were you calling to me? Who's stalking

you? What is all this?"

"And you've been with Maharet."

He sat back. He shook his head. "Lestat, I have pored over

manuscripts such as no living human has seen in centuries; I have laid my

hands on clay tablets that..."

"David, the scholar," I said. "Educated by the Talamasca to be

the perfect vampire, though they never had an inkling that that is

what you'd become."

"Oh, but you must understand. Maharet took me to these places

where she keeps her treasures. You have to know what it means to

hold in your hands a tablet covered in symbols that predate cuneiform.

And Maharet herself, I might have lived how many centuries

without ever glimpsing her."

Maharet was really the only one he had ever had to fear. I suppose

we both knew it. My memories of Maharet held no menace, only the

mystery of a survivor of Millennia, a living being so ancient that each

gesture seemed marble made liquid, and her soft voice had become

the distillation of all human eloquence.

"If she gave you her blessing, nothing else much matters," I said

with a little sigh. I wondered if I myself would ever lay eyes upon her

again. I had not hoped for it nor wanted it.

"I've also seen my beloved Jesse," said David.

"Ah, I should have thought of that, of course."

"I went searching for my beloved Jesse. I went crying out from

place to place, just the way you sent out the wordless cry for me."

Jesse. Pale, bird-boned, red-haired. Twentieth-century born.

Highly educated and psychic as a human. Jesse he had known as a

human; Jesse he knew now as an immortal. Jesse had been his human

pupil in the order called the Talamasca. Now he was the equal of

Jesse in beauty and vampiric power, or very near to it. I really did not

know.

Jesse had been brought over by Maharet of the First Brood, born

as a human before humans had begun to write their history at all or

barely knew that they had one. The Elder now, if there was one, the

Queen of the Damned was Maharet and her mute sister, Mekare, of

whom no one spoke anymore much at all.

I had never seen a fledgling brought over by one as old as Maharet.

Jesse had seemed a transparent vessel of immense strength when

last I saw her. Jesse must have had her own tales to tell now, her own

chronicles and adventures.

I had passed onto David my own vintage blood mixed with a strain

even older than Maharet's. Yes, blood from Akasha, and blood from

the ancient Marius, and of course my own strength was in my blood,

and my own strength, as we all knew, was quite beyond measure.

So he and Jesse must have been grand companions, and what had

it meant to her to see her aged mentor clothed in the fleshly raiment

of a young human male?

I was immediately envious and suddenly full of despair. I'd drawn

David away from those willowy white creatures who had drawn him

into their sanctuary somewhere far across the sea, deep in a land

where their treasures might be hidden from crisis and war for

generations. Exotic names came to mind, but I could not for the moment

think where they had gone, the two red-haired ones, the one ancient,

the one young. And to their hearth, they had admitted David.

A little sound startled me and I looked over my shoulder. I settled

back, embarrassed to have appeared so anxious, and I focused silently

for a moment on my victim.

My Victim was still in the restaurant very near us in this hotel,

sitting with his beautiful daughter. I wouldn't lose him tonight. I was

sure enough of that.

I sighed. Enough of him. I'd been following him for months. He

was interesting, but he had nothing to do with all this. Or did he? I

might kill him tonight, but I doubted it. Having spied the daughter,

and knowing full well how much the Victim loved her, I had decided

to wait until she returned home. I mean, why be so mean to a young

girl like that? And how he loved her. Right now, he was pleading with

her to accept a gift, something newly discovered by him and very

splendid in his eyes. However, I couldn't quite see the image of the

gift in her mind or his.

He was a good victim to follow flashy, greedy, at times good,

and always amusing.

Back to David. And how this strapping immortal opposite me must

have loved the vampire Jesse, and become the pupil of Maharet. Why

didn't I have any respect for the old ones anymore? What did I want,

for the love of heaven? No, that was not the question. The question

to me right now? Was I running from it?

He was politely waiting for me to look at him again. I did. But I

didn't speak. I didn't begin. And so he did what polite people often

do, he talked slowly on as if I were not staring at him through the

violet glasses like one with an ominous secret.

"No one has tried to hurt me," he said again in the lovely calm

British manner, "no one has questioned that you made me, all have

treated me with respect and kindness, though everyone of course

wanted to know all the details firsthand of how you survived the Body

Thief. And I don't think you know quite how you alarmed them, and

how much they love you."

This was a kindly reference to the last adventure which had

brought us together, and driven me to make him one of us. At the

time, he had not sung my praises to Heaven for any part of it.

"They love me, do they?" I said of the others, the remnants of our

revenant species around the world. "I know they didn't try to help

me." I thought of the defeated Body Thief.

Without David's help, I might never have won that battle. I could

not think of something that terrible. But I certainly didn't want to

think of all my brilliant and gifted vampiric cohorts and how they'd

watched from afar and done nothing.

The Body Thief himself was in Hell. And the body in question

was opposite me with David inside it.

"All right, I'm glad to hear I had them a little worried," I said.

"But the point is, I'm being followed again, and this time it's no

scheming mortal who knows the trick of astral projection and how to

take possession of someone else's body. I'm being stalked."

He studied me, not so much incredulous as striving perhaps to

grasp the implications.

"Being stalked," he repeated thoughtfully.

"Absolutely." I nodded. "David, I'm frightened. I'm actually

frightened. If I told you what I think this thing is, this thing that's

stalking me, you'd laugh."

"Would I?"

The waiter had set down the hot drinks, and the steam did feel

glorious. The piano played Satie ever so softly. Life was almost worth

living, even for a son of a bitch of a monster like myself. Something

crossed my mind.

In this very bar, I'd heard my victim say to his daughter two nights

ago, "You know I sold my soul for places just like this."

I'd been yards away, quite beyond mortal hearing, yet hearing

every word that fell from my Victim's lips, and I was enthralled with

the daughter. Dora, that was her name. Dora. She was the one thing

this strange and succulently alluring Victim truly loved, his only

child, his daughter.

I realized David was watching me.

"Just thinking about the victim who brought me here," I said.

"And his daughter. They're not going out tonight. The snow's too

deep and the wind too cruel. He'll take her back up to their suite, and

she'll look down on the towers of St. Patrick's. I want to keep my

victim in my sights, you know."

"Good heavens, have you fallen in love with a couple of mortals?"

"No. Not at all. Just a new way of hunting. The man's unique, a

blaze of individual traits. I adore him. I was going to feed on him the

first time I saw him, but he continues to surprise me. I've been

following him around for half a year."

I flashed back on them. Yes, they were going upstairs, just as I

thought. They had just left their table in the restaurant. The night

was too wretched even for Dora, though she wanted to go to the

church and to pray for her father, and beg him to stay there and pray

too. Some memory played between them, in their thoughts and

fragmentary words. Dora had been a little girl when my Victim had first

brought her to that cathedral.

He didn't believe in anything. She was some sort of religious

leader. Theodora. She preached to television audiences on the

seriousness of values and nourishment of the soul. And her father? Ah,

well, I'd kill him before I learnt too much more, or end up losing this

big trophy buck just for Dora's sake.

I looked back at David, who was watching me eagerly, shoulder

resting against the dark satin-covered wall. In this light, no one could

have known he wasn't human. Even one of us might have missed it.

As for me, I probably looked like a mad rock star who wanted all the

world's attention to crush him slowly to death.

"The victim's got nothing to do with it," I said. "I'll tell you all

that another time. It's just we're in this hotel because I followed him

here. You know my games, my hunts. I don't need blood any more

than Maharet does, but I can't stand the thought of not having it!"

"And so what is this new sort of game?" he said politely in British.

"I don't look so much for simple, evil people, murderers, you

know so much as a more sophisticated kind of criminal, someone

with the mentality of an Iago. This one's a drag dealer. Highly

eccentric. Brilliant. An art collector. He loves to have people shot, loves

to make billions in a week off cocaine through one gateway and

heroin through another. And then he loves his daughter. And she, she

has a televangelist church."

"You're really enthralled with these mortals."

"Look right now, past me, over my shoulder. See the two people

in the lobby moving towards the elevators?" I asked.

"Yes." He stared at them fixedly. Perhaps they'd paused in just

the right spot. I could feel, hear, and smell both of them, but I

couldn't know precisely where they were unless I turned around. But

they were there, the dark smiling man with his pale-faced eager and

innocent little girl, who was a woman-child of twenty-five if I had

reckoned correctly.

"I know that man's face," said David. "He's big time. Interna-

tional. They keep trying to bring him up on some charges. He pulled

off an extraordinary assassination, where was it?"

"The Bahamas."

"My God, how did you happen on him? Did you really see him in

person somewhere, you know, like a shell you found on the beach, or

did you see him in the papers and the magazines?"

"Do you recognize the girl? Nobody knows they're connected."

"No, I don't recognize her, but should I? She's so pretty, and so

sweet. You're not going to feed on her, are you?"

I laughed at his gentlemanly outrage at such a suggestion. I wondered

if David asked permission before sucking the blood of his victims,

or at least insisted that both parties be properly introduced. I

had no idea what his killing habits were, or how often he fed. I'd

made him plenty strong. That meant it didn't have to be every night.

He was blessed in that.

"The girl sings for Jesus on a television station," I said. "Her

church will someday have its headquarters in an old, old convent

building in New Orleans. Right now she lives there alone, and tapes

her programs out of a studio in the French Quarter. I think her show

goes through some ecumenical cable channel out of Alabama."

"You're in love with her."

"Not at all, just very eager to kill her father. Her television appeal

is peculiar. She talks theology with gripping common sense, you

know, the kind of televangelist that just might make it all work.

Don't we all fear that someone like that will come along? She dances

like a nymph or a temple virgin, I suppose I should say, sings like a

seraph, invites the entire studio audience to join with her. Theology

and ecstasy, perfectly blended. And all the requisite good works are

recommended."

"I see," he said. "And this makes it more exciting for you, to feast

on the father? By the way, the father is hardly an unobtrusive

man. Neither seem disguised. Are you sure no one knows they're

connected?"

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摘要：

PrologueLESTAThere.YouknowwhoIam?Thenskipthenextfewparagraphs.ForthosewhomIhavenotmetbefore,Iwantthistobeloveatfirstsight.Behold:yourherofortheduration,aperfectimitationofablond,blue-eyed,six-footAnglo-Saxonmale.Avampire,andoneofthestrongestyou'lleverencounter.MyfangsaretoosmalltobenoticedunlessIwan...

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Rice, Anne - Vampire Chronicles 05 - Memnoch The Devil

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