At that he softened somewhat, and then he shrugged. Shrugged just the way I did so often. And he extended his hand.
"I know you were hoping I wouldn't survive," I said. "But let's just keep the peace now. You are welcome in my house anytime as long as you keep the peace."
I didn't wait for any cold, incomplete, inadequate, or disappointing rejoinders. I wanted to go home. But he stopped me as I turned to go and he said,
"Peace between us! I'm grateful to you." He seemed more than merely sincere. "I didn't want you to die," he said, "but I hope that Devil who was inside you perished. I hope he went up in smoke to hover in agony again over this world forever."
This stung me to the heart. But I didn't blame him for what he said. The general feeling throughout the world of the Undead was that we'd been born of a diabolical force that brought us alive to Darkness only through blindness and thirst. There had not been a tear shed anywhere by anyone for Amel.
I wanted to say Amel was flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood, but I said nothing. If you really want peace in any world you have to learn to say nothing. I clasped his hand again and said I hoped he would come to Court soon.
When we reached the Chateau, it was Cyril who asked me how I could do that, just shake hands with that monster, after he'd delivered me to that Kapetria creature and her schemes.
"I shook his hand because I don't give a damn about him," I answered. "I care about peace among us. After all, some new and hideous spirit may yet descend to lay waste every dream I still hold dear, or some rebellious band of envious revenants rise out of nowhere to overthrow the Court soon enough."
33
Lestat
SPRING CAME TO our mountains with uncommon speed and warmth.
Soon all the windows of the castle were open to the night breezes, and the forest was green once more, and the lawns were like soft green velvet, and the wild grasses in the mountains were green, and the wildflowers broke out in patches of meadow under the moon, and the Court enjoyed the inevitable rejuvenation in countless ways.
No one had heard a word from the Replimoids. And no one was looking for them either. We were agreed on that, that we would not look for them, but I was in agony not knowing whether or not Amel had survived.
I figured, given their warm-blooded nature, their need for a warm climate, they had likely gone to establish themselves in some South American land where there were mountains and forest in which they could get lost. But then given their peaceful nature, and their desire to remain the People of the Purpose, dedicated to serving life in all forms--well, I figured they might be in safer places, like the United States.
The truth was, no one knew.
Now others were curious about the fate of Amel, obviously, but I don't think anyone felt the pain I felt. Louis knew what I couldn't confide, and he was respectful of it, and comforting and patient. Louis never failed me. But others spoke carelessly of Amel, of the Amel Factor, of the Amel Core, and of the Burnings instigated by Amel, and of how Amel might have been the ruin of all that he had brought into being when he plunged into Akasha thousands of years ago. The young ones wanted to hear again and again the story of our origins; but the heroes and heroines of the oft-told tales did not include the faceless, voiceless spirit who had only come to himself in the late twentieth century. And by the end of May, it was not uncommon to hear young blood drinkers in the ballroom saying casually that they found it hard to believe "all that old mythology" about Amel.
We were now what we had always been--a tribe of the shadows, hunting humans on the margins, drifting through the mortal crowds of the world wrapped in Gothic splendor and self-sustained romance. But we were united and we were strong. We had one another. And we had the Council, and we had the castle, and we had the Court.
I was intoxicated with the Court by the time summer came. I was spending part of every evening working with Marius on a constitution that he was writing in Latin, that reflected far too much of his Roman principles, and strange Hellenistic disdain for the material and the biological, and then I spent time talking with the young ones about how they must and could protect themselves from discovery, while working with all the relentless digital surveillance of the mortal world. The spiritual, the practical, the timeless challenges, the challenges of the moment.
Renovations were complete on the Chateau and on the village, and on three manor houses that had been reconstructed from old paintings and molding drawings and historical maps.
I had let most of the mortal architects, designers, and construction laborers go; only a small community of retirees remained. And I faced the question now of whether I wanted to bring my beloved chief architect, Alain Abelard, over into our world.
Meanwhile, Abelard didn't want to leave the village. He didn't want to leave me. He told me he had new projects to suggest to me, and would soon be presenting me with various plans. Abelard had no real life apart from me.
When all this became too much for me, I'd break off and go to Paris just to wander places old and new, and breathe in the city's endless vitality.
By mid-June, I was walking about Paris all the time and Louis invariably accompanied me. Soon we had our favorite streets, and our favorite bookshops, and our favorite cafes. We saw films together, and occasional plays. We haunted the Louvre and the Centre Georges Pompidou. But mostly we roamed.
So it was that on a particularly beautiful and warm Saturday night we found ourselves in Paris, talking softly about how miraculously changed our world was from the times in which vampires believed themselves to be sinister supernatural beings endowed with myriad mysterious characteristics by someone's deliberate design.
Louis spoke of having recovered Paris from the pain of the loss of Claudia, and of loving the modern city more than he had ever thought he could.
Well before midnight, we came to the Quartier Latin and settled in a spacious outdoor cafe, one of our favorites, a tourist mecca now, but as genuine and vital a place as one could desire.
We took a table on the very outside of the flagstone sidewalk to sit and talk some more and watch the passersby. I was thirsting. And once again, I kept thinking of innocent blood.
But there is a lot to be said about spending most of the night thirsting, when one's senses are sharpened by the thirst and colors are more vivid and sounds more piercing and sweet. So I ignored the thirst, and certainly I ignored the temptation to seek innocent blood.
We ordered enough of everything--wine, sandwiches, coffee, pastries--so that the waiter, to whom we slipped a large bill, would leave us alone for a long time.
Louis went off at one point to find a newspaper, and I was sitting there alone, hoping that no wandering members of the Undead would recognize me or seize on this moment to "talk."