Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles 11)

"Oh, but you have."

"No," he said. He got to his feet, the cloth shoes wet and heavy. Disgustedly he tore them off his feet and threw them away. He walked on and on. He was walking out of this immense city. He was walking away from all this.

"I have work for you in other places," said the being.

"Not for me," he said.

"You betray me."

"Weep by yourself over that. It's nothing to me."

He stopped. He could hear other blood drinkers in the night in far-distant places. He could hear voices screaming. Where were these dreadful cries coming from? He told himself he didn't care.

"I will punish you," said the being, "if you defy me." His voice was angry again. But very soon, as Cyril walked on and on, the creature fell silent. The creature was gone.

Well before morning, he'd reached the open countryside, and he dug deep into the earth to sleep for as long as he could. But the nagging voice had come back to him at sunset. "There isn't much time. You must go to Kyoto. You must destroy them."

He ignored the orders. The voice grew angrier and angrier as it had last night. "I will send another!" the voice threatened. "And some night soon I will punish you."

On he slept. He dreamed of flames but he didn't care. He wasn't doing that anymore, no matter what happened. But sometime during the night he saw the old vampire refuge in Kyoto burning. And he heard those awful screams again.

I will punish you!

In a perfect imitation of American slang, which he'd come to love, he answered, "Good luck with that."

7

The Story of Antoine

HE HAD DIED at the age of eighteen, Born to Darkness in weakness and confusion, beaten, burned, and left for dead along with his maker. In his fragile short human life, he'd played the piano only, studying at the Conservatoire de Paris when he was but ten years old. A genius he'd been called, and, oh, the Paris of those times. Bizet, Saint-Saens, Berlioz, even Franz Liszt--he'd seen them, heard their music, known them all. He might have become one of them. But his brother had betrayed him, fathering a child out of wedlock, and selecting him--a third son, aged seventeen--to take the blame for the scandal. Off to Louisiana he'd been shipped with a fortune that funded his ruin through drink and his nightly attendance at the gambling tables. Only now and then did he vengefully attack the piano in some fashionable parlor or hotel lobby, delighting and confusing happenstance audiences with a riot of broken and violent riffs and incoherent melodies. Taken up by whores and patronesses of the arts alike, he traded upon his looks: jet-black wavy hair, very white skin, and famously deep blue eyes and a baby Cupid's bow mouth that others liked to kiss and touch with their fingertips. He was tall but gangly, fragile looking, but notoriously strong, able to land a punch with ease to break the jaw of anyone who might try to harm him. Fortunately he had never broken his precious piano fingers doing such things, but knowing it well might happen, he'd taken to carrying a knife and a pistol, and he was no stranger either to the rapier and attended, a few times, at least, a fashionable New Orleans fencing establishment.

Mostly, he fell apart, disintegrated, lost things, woke up in strange bedrooms, got sick with tropical fever, or from bad food, or from drinking himself into a stupor. He had no respect for this raw, mad, essentially colonial town. It wasn't Paris, this disgusting American place. It might as well have been Hell for all he cared. If the Devil kept pianos in Hell, what did it matter?

Then Lestat de Lioncourt, that paragon of fashion, who lived in the Rue Royale with his trusted friend Louis de Pointe du Lac and their little ward Claudia, had come into his life with his fabled generosity and swaggering abandon.

Those days. Ah, those days. How beautiful they seemed in retrospect, and how raw and ugly they had been in fact. That crumbling city of New Orleans, the filth of it, the relentless rains, the mosquitoes and the stench of death from the soggy graveyards, the lawless riverfront streets, and that enigmatic gentleman in exile, Lestat, sustaining him, putting gold in his hands, luring him away from the bars and the roulette wheels and urging him to pound the nearest keyboard.

Lestat had purchased for him the finest pianoforte that he could find, a magnificent Broadwood grand, shipped from England, and played at one time by the great Frederic Chopin.

Lestat had brought servants to clean up his flat. Lestat had hired a cook to see that he ate before he drank, and Lestat had told him that he had a gift and that he must believe in it.

Such a charmer, Lestat in his elegant black frock coats and glossy four-in-hands, marching up and down on the antique Savonnerie carpet, urging him on with a wink and a flashing smile, his blond hair bushy and rebellious down to his crisp white collar. He smelled of clean linen, fresh flowers, the spring rain.

"Antoine, you must compose," Lestat had told him. Paper, ink, everything he needed for his writing. And then those ardent embraces, shrill and chilling kisses when oblivious to the silent and devoted servants they lay in the big cypress four-poster bed together beneath the flaming red silk tester. So cold Lestat had seemed yet so rampantly affectionate. Hadn't those kisses now and then hurt with a tiny sting like an insect biting into his throat? What did he care? The man intoxicated him. "Compose for me," he'd whispered in Antoine's ear, and the command imprinted itself on Antoine's heart.

Sometimes he composed for twenty-four hours without stopping--never mind the endless noise from the crowded muddy street outside his windows--then fell down from exhaustion to sleep over the piano itself in a stupor.

Then Lestat in those shining white gloves and with that glistening silver walking stick was there blazing before him, face moist and cheeks ruddy.

"Here, get up now, Antoine. You've slept enough. Play for me."

"Why do you believe in me?" he'd asked.

"Play!" Lestat pointed to the piano keys.

Lestat danced in circles as Antoine played, looking up into the smoky light of the crystal chandelier. "That's it, more, that's it ..."

And then Lestat himself would flop down into the gold fauteuil behind the desk and begin writing with superb speed and accuracy the notes that Antoine was playing. What had happened to all those songs, all those sheets of parchment, all those leather folders of music?