Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles 11)

Catacombs. Images of bones. I heard a female blood drinker crying. Two creatures. And one speaking very rapidly in a low whisper. I knew that timbre. That was the voice I'd heard earlier this night. I left the Ile de la Cite, and started for the catacombs.

In a flash I caught a vision of two women together weeping, the elder a white skeletal monster with a hag's hair. Horrid, like something painted by Goya. Then it was gone, and I couldn't home in on it again.

"Bianca!" I said. "Bianca!"

I picked up speed. I knew where those tunnels were, those deep dark ugly tunnels beneath the city whose walls are packed with the disintegrating bones of centuries of dead Parisians. The public was admitted to those underground passages. I knew the public entrance. I was racing towards the Place Denfert-Rochereau, and had almost reached the spot, when a strange sight stopped me.

It was a brilliant flash at the entrance to the tunnel, as if a flame had erupted from the mouth of the charnel house. The dark wooden pedimented building that sheltered the entrance exploded and fell to pieces with a loud clatter.

I saw a female blood drinker with long blond hair, white, immensely powerful, rising from the pavement, and in her arms two other figures, both clinging to her, one with a skeletal white arm and hag hair buried against her bosom, the other, auburn haired and shaking with sobs.

For me, for my eyes, this mysterious being slowed her ascent, and we gazed for one split second at one another.

I will see you again, brave one.

Then she was gone.

I felt a blast of air against my face.

I was sitting on the pavement when I came to my senses.

Sevraine.

That was the name imprinted on my mind. Sevraine. But who was this Sevraine?

I was still sitting there staring at the entrance to the tunnel when I heard fast crisp steps approaching, someone walking steadily, heavily and fast.

"Get up, Lestat."

I turned and looked up into the face of my mother.

There she was after all these years in her old khaki safari jacket and faded jeans, her hair in a braid over her shoulder, her pale face like a porcelain mask.

"Come on, stand up!" she said, those cold blue eyes flashing in the lights of the burning building at the mouth of the tunnel.

And in that moment as love and resentment clashed with humbling fury, I was back at home hundreds of years ago, walking with her in those cold barren fields, with her haranguing me in that impatient voice. "Get up. Move. Come on."

"What are you going to do if I don't?" I snarled. "Slap me?"

And that's what she did. She slapped me. "Get up quickly," she said. "Take me to that glorified shelter you've made for yourself in the old castle. We must talk. Tomorrow night, I'll take you to Sevraine."

13

Marius

Reunion on the Brazilian Shore

IT SEEMED the Voice woke him each evening, telling him to go out and cleanse the country around him of mavericks, that he would be infinitely more content if he did this. The Voice took a gentle tack with him.

"I know you, Marius. I know you well. I know that you love your companion, Daniel. Do as I ask of you and he will never be in danger."

Marius ignored the Voice, as certainly as a priest might ignore the small voice of Satan, calculating all the while: How does this creature get into my brain? How does he manage to speak to me in such a palpable warm way as if we were brothers?

"I am you, Marius, and you are me," said the Voice. "Listen to what I say."

Marius wouldn't let Daniel out of his sight.

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