Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles 11)

"Yes," Gremt whispered. "And you said more. 'But know this: if you would become an organized being as you see in me, love all mankind and womankind and all their children. Do not take your strength from blood! Do not feed on suffering. Do not rise like a god above crowds chanting in adoration. Do not lie.' "

She nodded. "Yes," she said. A gentle smile broke over her face. She was not failing him in this moment. She was opening to him. He saw the same sensitivity and compassion in her now that he had seen those many years ago. And he had waited so very long for this! He wanted to reach out to her, to embrace her, but he didn't dare.

"I have followed your counsel," he said. Now he knew the tears were streaming from his eyes, though they never had before. "I've followed it always. And I built the Talamasca for you, Pandora, and for all of your kind and for all humankind and I patterned it as best I could on the monks and scholars of that beautiful old monastery, Vivarium, of which not a stone remains. I built it in memoriam to that brave Cassiodorus who studied and dipped his pen to write to the very end, with such strength and devotion, even as the world went dark around him."

She sighed. She was amazed. And her smile brightened. "And so it was from that moment?"

"Yes, that the Talamasca was born," he said. "From that encounter."

Arjun was gazing at him in pure wonder.

She rose from the table.

She moved around it and came towards Gremt. How loving and eager she appeared, how guileless and how fearless. She was no more frightened of him now than she'd been hundreds of years ago.

But he was spent, dangerously spent--more spent than he could ever have imagined by this--and he couldn't bear the sweetness, the joy, of having her in his arms.

"Forgive me," he whispered. He wiped foolishly at the tears on his face.

"Talk with us, stay with us here," she said imploringly. And Arjun uttered the same invitation.

But Gremt did the only thing he could do with his waning strength. He moved away fast, leaving the garden behind him and the lights of the bungalow lost in the forest of bamboo and mango trees.

She could have pursued him. If she did try to pursue, he would have no choice but to vanish, and that he di

d not want to do. He wanted to remain in this body as long as possible. That was always his choice.

But she didn't pursue him. She accepted his exit. And he knew he'd see her soon again. He'd see them all soon. And he would tell her and all of the others everything.

He followed the road for a long time, gradually regaining his strength, his body hardening once more, his pulse steady, the tears gone and his vision clear.

Headlights now and then picked him out of the darkness as cars swept by, leaving him once more in silence.

So he had told her. He had confided the great secret of the Talamasca to her first of all, before all others, and very soon he would make it known to the entire tribe of blood drinkers.

Never to those mortal Talamasca members who struggled as they always did to continue their studies. No. They would be left in peace to continue with the fables of the Order's origins.

But he would tell it to all of them, the great supernatural beings whom the Talamasca had studied from its very beginnings.

And maybe they would understand as she understood, and maybe they would accept as she had accepted. And maybe they would not fail him in those moments of connection he so badly needed with them.

Whatever the case, it was time, was it not, to help them directly, to reach out, to give them what he could as they confronted the greatest challenge in their history. Who better to help them solve the mystery of the Voice than Gremt Stryker Knollys?

12

Lestat

The Jungles of the Amazon

DAVID HAD DRAWN me out. Clever David. He'd called Benji's line in New York, chatting away with Benji on the broadcast about the crisis. He never gave his name. Didn't have to. Benji knew and I knew, and probably a lot of other blood drinkers knew, that cultured British voice.

On and on, David kept warning the young ones to stay out of the cities, to go into the countryside. He warned the old ones who might be hearing some anonymous command to destroy others: Don't listen. Benji kept agreeing. Over and over again, David said, Stay out of cities like Lyon, or Berlin, or Florence, or Avignon, or Milan, or Avignon or Rome or Avignon ... and so on it went as he named city after city, always throwing in Avignon, and saying that he was certain the great hero, Lestat, was not the one guilty of all this. He'd stake his eternal life on Lestat's honor; Lestat's loyalty to others; Lestat's innate sense of goodness. Why, he, David, wished he had the authority of the pope, so that he could stand in the courtyard of the ruined Popes' Palace at Avignon and declare for all the world that Lestat wasn't guilty of these Burnings!

I burst out laughing.

I was listening in my drawing room in my father's chateau not four hundred kilometers from the little city of Avignon. There had never been any vampires in Avignon! And no burnings either.

Every night, I'd been listening to Benji. I was sick with worry for those who were dying. It was not all fledglings and the misbegotten. Many of the three-and four-hundred-year-old Children of Darkness were being slaughtered. Perhaps some of those I had known and loved on my long journey had been slaughtered, lost to me and to everyone else forever. When Akasha had gone on her rampage, her great Burning, she'd spared those connected to me, out of favor, but this new Burning seemed infinitely more terrible, more random. And I could not guess, any more than anyone else, who or what lay behind the devastation.