Anne Rice - Vampire Chronicles 3 - Queen Of The Damned

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The Vampire Chronicles

Volume 3

QUEEN of the DAMNED

Anne Rice

Prologue

I'm the vampire Lestat. Remember me? The vampire who became a super rock star,

the one who wrote the autobiography? The one with the blond hair and the gray eyes,

and the insatiable desire for visibility and fame? You remember. I wanted to be a

symbol of evil in a shining century that didn't have any place for the literal evil that I

am. I even figured I'd do some good in that fashion-playing the devil on the painted

stage.

And I was off to a good start when we talked last. I'd just made my debut in San

Francisco-first "live concert" for me and my mortal band. Our album was a huge

success. My autobiography was doing respectably with both the dead and the undead.

Then something utterly unforeseen took place. Well, at least I hadn't seen it coming.

And when I left you, I was hanging from the proverbial cliff, you might say.

Well, it's all over now-what followed. I've survived, obviously. I wouldn't be talking

to you if I hadn't. And the cosmic dust has finally settled; and the small rift in the

world's fabric of rational beliefs has been mended, or at least closed.

I'm a little sadder for all of it, and a little meaner and a little more conscientious as

well. I'm also infinitely more powerful, though the human in me is closer to the

surface than ever-an anguished and hungry being who both loves and detests this

invincible immortal shell in which I'm locked.

The blood thirst? Insatiable, though physically I have never needed the blood less.

Possibly I could exist now without it altogether. But the lust I feel for everything that

walks tells me that this will never be put to the test.

You know, it was never merely the need for the blood anyway, though the blood is all

things sensual that a creature could desire; it's the intimacy of that moment-drinking,

killing-the great heart-to-heart dance that takes place as the victim weakens and I feel

myself expanding, swallowing the death which, for a split second, blazes as large as

the life.

That's deceptive, however. No death can be as large as a life. And that's why I keep

taking life, isn't it? And I'm as far from salvation now as I could ever get. The fact that

I know it only makes it worse.

Of course I can still pass for human; all of us can, in one way or another, no matter

how old we are. Collar up, hat down, dark glasses, hands in pockets-it usually does

the trick. I like slim leather jackets and tight jeans for this disguise now, and a pair of

plain black boots that are good for walking on any terrain. But now and then I wear

the fancier silks which people like in these southern climes where I now reside.

If someone does look too closely, then there is a little telepathic razzle-dazzle:

Perfectly normal, what you see. And a flash of the old smile, fang teeth easily

concealed, and the mortal goes his way.

Occasionally I throw up all the disguises; I just go out the way I am. Hair long, a

velvet blazer that makes me think of the olden times, and an emerald ring or two on

my right hand. I walk fast right through the downtown crowds in this lovely corrupt

southern city; or stroll slowly along the beaches, breathing the warm southern breeze,

on sands that are as white as the moon.

Nobody stares for more than a second or two. There are too many other inexplicable

things around us-horrors, threats, mysteries that draw you in and then inevitably

disenchant you. Back to the predictable and humdrum. The prince is never going to

come, everybody knows that; and maybe Sleeping Beauty's dead.

It's the same for the others who have survived with me, and who share this hot and

verdant little corner of the universe-the southeastern tip of the North American

continent, the glistering metropolis of Miami, a happy hunting ground for

bloodthirsting immortals if ever there was such a place.

It's good to have them with me, the others; it's crucial, really- and what I always

thought I wanted: a grand coven of the wise, the enduring, the ancient, and the

careless young.

But ah, the agony of being anonymous among mortals has never been worse for me,

greedy monster that I am. The soft murmur of preternatural voices can't distract me

from it. That taste of mortal recognition was too seductive-the record albums in the

windows, the fans leaping and clapping in front of the stage. Never mind that they

didn't really believe I was a vampire; for that moment we were together. They were

calling my name!

Now the record albums are gone, and I will never listen to those songs again. My

book remains-along with Interview with the Vampire-safely disguised as fiction,

which is, perhaps, as it should be. I caused enough trouble, as you will see.

Disaster, that's what I wrought with my little games. The vampire who would have

been a hero and a martyr finally for one moment of pure relevance . . .

You'd think I'd learn something from it, wouldn't you? Well, I did, actually. I really

did.

But it's just so painful to shrink back into the shadows-Lestat, the sleek and nameless

gangster ghoulie again creeping up on helpless mortals who know nothing of things

like me. So hurtful to be again the outsider, forever on the fringes, struggling with

good and evil in the age-old private hell of body and soul.

In my isolation now I dream of finding some sweet young thing in a moonlighted

chamber-one of those tender teenagers, as they call them now, who read my book and

listened to my songs; one of the idealistic lovelies who wrote me fan letters on scented

paper, during that brief period of ill-fated glory, talking of poetry and the power of

illusion, saying she wished I was real; I dream of stealing into her darkened room,

where maybe my book lies on a bedside table, with a pretty velvet marker in it, and I

dream of touching her shoulder and smiling as our eyes meet. "Lestat! I always

believed in you. I always knew you would come!"

I clasp her face in both hands as I bend to kiss her. "Yes, darling," I answer, "and you

don't know how I need you, how I love you, how I always have."

Maybe she would find me more charming on account of what's befallen me-the

unexpected horror I've seen, the inevitable pain Pve endured. It's an awful truth that

suffering can deepen us, give a greater luster to our colors, a richer resonance to our

words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the

spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.

Please forgive me if I sound bitter.

I don't have any right to be. I started the whole thing; and I got out in one piece, as

they say. And so many of our kind did not. Then there were the mortals who suffered.

That part was inexcusable. And surely I shall always pay for that.

But you see, I still don't really fully understand what happened. I don't know whether

or not it was a tragedy, or merely a meaningless venture. Or whether or not something

absolutely magnificent might have been born of my blundering, something that could

have lifted me right out of irrelevance and nightmare and into the burning light of

redemption after all.

I may never know, either. The point is, it's over. And our world-our little private

realm-is smaller and darker and safer than ever. It will never again be what it was.

It's a wonder that I didn't foresee the cataclysm, but then I never really envision the

finish of anything that I start. It's the risk that fascinates, the moment of infinite

possibility. It lures me through eternity when all other charms fail.

After all, I was like that when I was alive two hundred years ago-the restless one, the

impatient one, the one who was always spoiling for love and a good brawl. When I set

out for Paris in the 17805 to be an actor, all I dreamed of were beginnings-the moment

each night when the curtain went up.

Maybe the old ones are right. I refer now to the true immortals-the blood drinkers

who've survived the millennia-who say that none of us really changes over time; we

only become more fully what we are.

To put it another way, you do get wiser when you live for hundreds of years; but you

also have more time to turn out as badly as your enemies always said you might.

And I'm the same devil I always was, the young man who would have center stage,

where you can best see me, and maybe love me. One's no good without the other. And

I want so much to amuse you, to enthrall you, to make you forgive me everything. ...

Random moments of secret contact and recognition will never be enough, I'm afraid.

But I'm jumping ahead now, aren't I? If you've read my autobiography then you want

to know what I'm talking about. What was this disaster of which I speak?

Well, let's review, shall we? As I've said, I wrote the book and made the album

because I wanted to be visible, to be seen for what I am, even if only in symbolic

terms.

As to the risk that mortals might really catch on, that they might realize I was exactly

what I said I was-I was rather excited by that possibility as well. Let them hunt us

down, let them destroy us, that was in a way my fondest wish. We don't deserve to

exist; they ought to kill us. And think of the battles! Ah, fighting those who really

know what I am. But I never really expected such a confrontation; and the

rockmusician persona, it was too marvelous a cover for a fiend like me.

It was my own kind who took me literally, who decided to punish me for what I had

done. And of course I'd counted on that too.

After all, I'd told our history in my autobiography; I'd told our deepest secrets, things

I'd been sworn never to reveal. And I was strutting before the hot lights and the

camera lenses. And what if some scientist had gotten hold of me, or more likely a

zealous police officer on a minor traffic violation five minutes before sunup, and

somehow I'd been incarcerated, inspected, identified, and classified-all during the

daylight hours while I lay helpless-to the satisfaction of the worst mortal skeptics

worldwide?

Granted, that wasn't very likely. Still isn't. (Though it could be such fun, it really

could!)

Yet it was inevitable that my own kind should be infuriated by the risks I was taking,

that they would try to burn me alive, or chop me up in little immortal pieces. Most of

the young ones, they were too stupid to realize how safe we were.

And as the night of the concert approached, I'd found myself dreaming of those

battles, too. Such a pleasure it was going to be to destroy those who were as evil as I

was; to cut a swathe through the guilty; to cut down my own image again and again.

Yet, you know, the sheer joy of being out there, making music, making theater,

making magic!-that's what it was all about in the end. I wanted to be alive, finally. I

wanted to be simply human. The mortal actor who'd gone to Paris two hundred years

ago and met death on the boulevard, would have his moment at test.

But to continue with the review-the concert was a success. I had my moment of

triumph before fifteen thousand screaming mortal fans; and two of my greatest

immortal loves were there with me-Gabrielle and Louis-my fledglings, my paramours,

from whom I'd been separated for too many dark years.

Before the night was over, we licked the pesty vampires who tried to punish me for

what I was doing. But we'd had an invisible ally in these little skirmishes; our enemies

burst into flames before they could do us harm.

As morning approached, I was too elated by the whole night Ib take the question of

danger seriously. I ignored Gabrielle's impassioned warnings-too sweet to hold her

once again; and I dismissed Louis's dark suspicions as I always had.

And then the jam, the cliffhanger ...

Just as the sun was rising over Carmel Valley and I was closing my eyes as vampires

must do at that moment, I realized I wasn't alone in my underground lair. It wasn't

only the young vampires I'd reached with my music; my songs had roused from their

slumber the very oldest of our kind in the world.

And I found myself in one of those breathtaking instants of risk and possibility. What

was to follow? Was I to die finally, or perhaps to be reborn?

Now, to tell you the full story of what happened after that, I must move back a little in

time.

I have to begin some ten nights before the fatal concert and I have to let you slip into

the minds and hearts of other beings who were responding to my music and my book

in ways of which I knew little or nothing at the time.

In other words, a lot was going on which I had to reconstruct later. And it is the

reconstruction that I offer you now.

So we will move out of the narrow, lyrical confines of the first person singular; we

will jump as a thousand mortal writers have done into the brains and souls of "many

characters." We will gallop into the world of "third person" and "multiple point of

view."

And by the way, when these other characters think or say of me that I am beautiful or

irresistible, etc., don't think I put these words in their heads. I didn't! It's what was told

to me after, or what I drew out of their minds with infallible telepathic power; I

wouldn't lie about that or anything else. I can't help being a gorgeous fiend. It's just

the card I drew. The bastard monster who made me what I am picked me on account

of my good looks. That's the long and short of it. And accidents like that occur all the

time.

We live in a world of accidents finally, in which only aesthetic principles have a

consistency of which we can be sure. Right and wrong we will struggle with forever,

striving to create and maintain an ethical balance; but the shimmer of summer rain

under the street lamps or the great flashing glare of artillery against a night sky-such

brutal beauty is beyond dispute.

Now, be assured: though I am leaving you, I will return with full flair at the

appropriate moment. The truth is, I hate not being the first person narrator all the way

through! To paraphrase David Copperfield, I don't know whether I'm the hero or the

victim of this tale. But either way, shouldn't I dominate it? I'm the one really telling it,

after all.

Alas, my being the James Bond of vampires isn't the whole issue. Vanity must wait. I

want you to know what really took place with us, even if you never believe it. In

fiction if nowhere else, I must have a little meaning, a little coherence, or I will go

mad.

So until we meet again, I am thinking of you always; I love you; I wish you were here

... in my arms.

DECLARATION IN THE FORM OF GRAFFITI

-written in black felt-tip pen on a red wall in the back room of a bar called Dracula's

Daughter in San Francisco-

Children of Darkness Be Advised of the Following:

BOOK ONE: Interview with the Vampire, published in 1976, was a true story. Any

one of us could have written it-an account of becoming what we are, of the misery and

the searching. Yet Louis, the two-hundred-year-old immortal who reveals all, insists

on mortal sympathy. Lestat, the villain who gave Louis the Dark Gift, gave him

precious little else in the way of explanations or consolation. Sound familiar? Louis

hasn't given up the search for salvation yet, though even Armand, the oldest immortal

he was ever to find, could tell him nothing of why we are here or who made us. Not

very surprising, is it, vampire boys and girls? After all, there has never been a

Baltimore Catechism for vampires.

That is, there wasn't until the publication of:

BOOK Two: The Vampire Lestat, this very week. Subtitle: His "early education and

adventures." You don't believe it? Check with the nearest mortal bookseller. Then go

into the nearest record store and ask to see the album which has only just arrived-also

entitled The Vampire Lestat, with predictable modesty. Or if all else fails, switch on

your cable TV, if you don't disdain such things, and wait for one of Lestat's numerous

rock video films which began to air with nauseating frequency only yesterday. You

will know Lestat for what he is immediately. And it may not surprise you to be told

that he plans to compound these unprecedented outrages by appearing "live" on stage

in a debut concert in this very city. Yes, on Halloween, you guessed it.

But let us forget for the moment the blatant insanity of his preternatural eyes flashing

from every record store window, or his powerful voice singing out the secret names

and stories of the most ancient among us. Why is he doing all this? What do his songs

tell us? It is spelled out in his book. He has given us not only a catechism but a Bible.

And deep into biblical times we are led to confront our first parents: Enkil and

Akasha, rulers of the valley of the Nile before it was ever called Egypt. Kindly

disregard the gobbledygook of how they became the first bloodsuckers on the face of

the earth; it makes only a little more sense than the story of how life formed on this

planet in the first place, or how human fetuses develop from microscopic cells within

the wombs of their mortal mothers. The truth is we are descended from this venerable

pair, and like it or no, there is considerable reason to believe that the primal generator

of all our delicious and indispensable powers resides in one or the other of their

ancient bodies. What does this mean? To put it bluntly, if Akasha and Enkil should

ever walk hand in hand into a furnace, we should all burn with them. Crush them to

glittering dust, and we are annihilated.

Ah, but there's hope. The pair haven't moved in over fifty centuries! Yes, that's

correct. Except of course that Lestat claims to have wakened them both by playing a

violin at the foot of their shrine. But if we dismiss his extravagant tale that Akasha

took him in her arms and shared with him her primal blood, we are left with the more

likely state of affairs, corroborated by stories of old, that the two have not batted an

eyelash since before the fall of the Roman Empire. They've been kept all this time in a

nice private crypt by Marius, an ancient Roman vampire, who certainly knows what's

best for all of us. And it was he who told the Vampire Lestat never to reveal the

secret.

Not a very trustworthy confidant, the Vampire Lestat. And what are his motives for

the book, the album, the films, the concert? Quite impossible to know what goes on in

the mind of this fiend, except that what he wants to do he does, with reliable

consistency. After all, did he not make a vampire child? And a vampire of his own

mother, Gabrielle, who for years was his loving companion? He may set his sights

upon the papacy, this devil, out of sheer thirst for excitement!

So that's the gist: Loiiis, a wandering philosopher whom none of us can find, has

confided our deepest moral secrets to countless strangers. And Lestat has dared to

reveal our history to the world, as he parades his supernatural endowments before the

mortal public.

Now the Question: Why are these two still in existence? Why have we not destroyed

them already? Oh, the danger to us from the great mortal herd is by no means a

certainty. The villagers are not yet at the door, torches in hand, threatening to burn the

castle. But the monster is courting a change in mortal perspective. And though we are

too clever to corroborate for the human record his foolish fabrications, the outrage

exceeds all precedent. It cannot go unpunished.

Further observations: If the story the Vampire Lestat has told is true-and there are

many who swear it is, though on what account they cannot tell you-may not the two-

thousand-year-old Marius come forward to punish Lestat's disobedience? Or perhaps

the King and Queen, if they have ears to hear, will waken at the sound of their names

carried on radio waves around the planet. What might happen to us all if this should

occur? Shall we prosper under their new reign? Or will they set the time for universal

destruction? Whatever the case, might not the swift destruction of the Vampire Lestat

avert it?

The Plan: Destroy the Vampire Lestat and all his cohorts as soon as they dare to show

themselves. Destroy all those who show him allegiance.

A Warning: Inevitably, there are other very old blood with nauseating frequency only

yesterday. You will know Lestat for what he is immediately. And it may not surprise

you to be told that he plans to compound these unprecedented outrages by appearing

"live" on stage in a debut concert in this very city. Yes, on Halloween, you guessed it.