The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles 6)

I was eager for all these lessons. That we hunted together was a magnificent pleasure. I came to realize quickly enough that Marius had been clumsy in the murders he had committed for me to witness before I'd been transformed. I knew then, as perhaps I've made plain in this story, that he wanted me to feel pity for these victims; he wanted me to experience horror. He wanted me to see death as an abomination. But due to my youth, my devotion to him and the violence done me in my short mortal life, I had not responded as he hoped.

Whatever the case, he was now a much more skilled killer. We often took the same victim, together, I drinking from the throat of our captive, while he fed from the man's wrist. Sometimes he delighted in holding the victim tightly for me while I drank all of the blood.

Being new, I was thirsty every night. I could have lived for three or more without killing, yes, and sometimes I did, but by the fifth night of denying myself-this was put to the test-I was too weak to rise from the sarcophagus. So what this meant was that, when and if I were ever on my own, I must kill at least every fourth night.

My first few months were an orgy. Each kill seemed more thrilling, more paralyzingly delicious than the one which had gone before. The mere sight of a bared throat could bring about in me such a state of arousal that I became like an animal, incapable of language or restraint. When I opened my eyes in the cold stony darkness, I envisioned human flesh. I could feel it in my naked hands and I wanted it, and the night could have no other events for me until I had laid my powerful hands on that one which would be the sacrifice to my need.

For long moments after the kill, sweet th

robbing sensations passed through me as the warm fragrant blood found all the corners of my body, as it pumped its magnificent heat into my face.

This, and this alone, was enough to absorb me utterly, young as I was.

But Marius had no intention of letting me wallow in blood, the hasty young predator, with no other thought but to glut himself night after night.

"You must really begin to learn history and philosophy and the law in earnest," he told me. "You are not destined for the University of Padua now. You are destined to endure. "

So after our stealthy missions were completed, and we returned to the warmth of the palazzo, he forced me to my books. He wanted some distance between me and Riccardo and the others anyway, lest they become suspicious of the change that had occurred.

In fact, he told me they "knew" about the change whether they realized it or not. Their bodies knew that I was no longer human, though it might take their minds some time to accept the fact.

"Show them only courtesy and love, only complete indulgence, but keep your distance," Marius told me. "By the time they realize the unthinkable is the fact, you will have assured them that you are no enemy to them, that you are indeed Amadeo still, whom they love, and that though you have been changed, you yourself have not changed towards them. "

I understood this. At once I felt a greater love for Riccardo. I felt it for all of the boys.

"But Master," I asked, "don't you ever become impatient with them, that they think more slowly, that they are so clumsy? I love them, yes, but surely you see them in a more pejorative light even than I do. "

"Amadeo," he said softly, "they are all going to die. " His face was charged with grief.

I felt it immediately and totally, which was always the way with feelings now. They came on in a torrent and taught their lessons at once.

They are all going to die. Yes, and I am immortal.

After that, I could only be patient with them, and indeed, I indulged myself in the manner in which I looked at them and studied them, never letting them know it, but glorying in all the details of them as if they were exotic because . . . they were going to die.

There is too much to describe, too much. I can't find a way to put down all that became clear to me in the first few months alone. And there was nothing made known to me in that time which was not deepened afterwards.

I saw process everywhere I looked; I smelled corruption, but I also beheld the mystery of growth, the magic of things blossoming and ripening, and in fact all process, whether towards maturity or towards the grave, delighted and enthralled me, except, that is, the disintegration of the human mind.

My study of government and law was more of a challenge. Though reading was accomplished with infinitely greater speed and near instantaneous comprehension of syntax, I had to force myself to be interested in such things as the history of Roman Law from ancient times, and the great code of the Emperor Justinian, called the Corpus Juris Civilis, which my Master thought to be one of the finest codes of law ever written.

"The world is only getting better," Marius instructed me. "With each century, civilization becomes more enamored of justice, ordinary men make greater strides towards sharing the wealth which was once the booty of the powerful, and art benefits by every increase in freedom, becoming ever more imaginative, ever more inventive and ever more beautiful. "

I could understand this only theoretically. I had no faith or interest in law. In fact, I had a total contempt in the abstract for my Master's ideas. What I mean is, I didn't have contempt for him, but I had an underlying contempt for law and for legal institutions and governmental institutions that was so total that I did not even understand it myself.

My Master said that he understood it.

"You were born in a dark savage land," he said. "I wish I could take you back two hundred years in time to the years before Batu, the son of Genghis Khan, sacked the magnificent city of Kiev Rus, to the time when indeed the domes of its Santa Sofia were golden, and its people full of ingenuity and hope. "

"I heard ad nauseam of that old glory," I said quietly, not wanting to anger him. "I was stuffed with tales of the olden times when I was a boy. In the miserable wooden house in which we lived, only yards from the frozen river, I listened to that rot as I shivered by the fire. Rats lived in our house. There was nothing beautiful in it but the ikons, and my Father's songs. There was nothing but depravity there, and we speak now, as you know, of an immense land. You cannot know how big Russia is unless you have been there, unless you have traveled as I did with my Father into the bitter-cold northern forests to Moscow, or to Novgorod, or east to Cracow. " I broke off. "I don't want to think of those times or that place," I said. "In Italy one cannot dream of enduring such a place. "

"Amadeo, the evolution of law, of government, is different in each land and with each people. I chose Venice, as I told you long ago, because it is a great Republic, and because its people are firmly connected to the Mother Earth by the simple fact that they are all merchants and engaged in trade. I love the city of Florence because its great family, the Medici, are bankers, not idle titled aristocrats who scorn all effort in the name of what they believe has been given them by God. The great cities of Italy are made by men who work, men who create, men who do, and on account of this, there is a greater compassion to all systems, and infinitely greater opportunity for men and women in all walks of life. "

I was discouraged by all this talk. What did it matter?

"Amadeo, the world now is yours," my Master said. "You must look at the larger movements of history. The state of the world will begin in time to oppress you, and you will find, as all immortals do, that you cannot simply shut your heart on it, especially not you. "

"Why so?" I asked a little crossly. "I think I can shut my eyes. What do I care if a man is a banker or a merchant? What do I care whether I live in a city which builds its own merchant fleet? I can look forever on the paintings in this palazzo, Master. I have not yet begun to see all the details in The Procession of the Magi, and there are so many others. And what of all the paintings in this city?"