Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles 11)

"Prepared, of course," said Seth.

It had been two years since Fareed or Seth had visited their apartment there or the adjacent small laboratory they maintained on the sixty-third floor of a Midtown building. But this place was always in readiness, and why Fareed was asking foolish questions about this now, he did not know, except that it was a form of stalling.

Seth went on talking as if he were thinking aloud, checking himself on what had to be done. "All the human employees are gone home for indefinite leave with pay; all blood drinkers are in the basement rooms and will remain there until we return. The blood supplies are adequate for a long sequester. The security s

ystems are in operation. This compound's as safe as it ever was. If the Voice launches an attack, well, it won't succeed."

"The basements," Viktor whispered. He shuddered. "How can they stand it, being shut up in a cellar for nights at a time?"

"They're blood drinkers," said Seth quietly. "You're a human being. You forget over and over again."

"Are there no blood drinkers with fears of cellars and crypts?" asked Viktor.

"None that I've ever known," said Seth. "How could there be?"

There was no doubt that the cellars were safe. Yet we are leaving here, leaving this superb and secure installation, to go to New York, thought Fareed, but he knew that they had to do it.

"I don't want to be locked in a cellar, not here or anywhere," said Viktor. "I've had a horror of close dark places ever since I can remember."

Fareed scarcely heard. Seth was assuring Viktor he'd be in an apartment of glass walls in New York high above the streets of Manhattan. No crypts.

Typical of a mortal to obsess about something that was of no importance. Fareed wished he could as easily divert himself from his deeper fears.

Fareed had sat quietly astonished this very morning, over fourteen hours ago, before sunrise, as Seth had connected privately with Benji Mahmoud by phone and told him they were coming. The phone had been on speaker. Seth and Benji had gone back and forth in Arabic for half an hour. And when Seth had revealed the existence of Rose and Viktor, Fareed had been horrified.

But he understood. They were going because they had to go, and they had to trust Benji and Armand and the others in New York with their deepest secrets. Leaving Viktor and Rose behind, leaving them here or anywhere, was simply impossible. Viktor had always been their responsibility, and now Rose was their responsibility as well by decision. And so they would take these two lovely young mortals with them to the command central of the crisis, and lodge nearby.

Fareed had slept the daytime sleep of the dead since that phone call, and awakened at sunset and come to his senses knowing Seth had done what he had to do. He was also certain of Benji Mahmoud's devotion to Lestat, certain of the devotion of all his little family--Armand, Louis, Sybelle, Antoine, and whoever else had joined them. But he knew that the secret of Viktor and Rose would soon leak telepathically. It had to leak.

When this many knew a secret, it was no longer a secret. He looked now at this sturdy and princely young man whom he, Fareed, had brought up from earliest childhood, wondering what really did lie in store for him. Fareed had loved him irresistibly, nourishing him with knowledge, luxury, and above all with a rich experience of the physical wonders and beauty of this Earth through travel and private instruction from his earliest years. The only thing ever denied to Viktor had been childhood, an experience of other children, an experience of being what the modern world calls "normal" with all its attendant risks. That Viktor had never known, and now fate had put him in the path of a young mortal woman whose experience had not been all that different from Viktor's own, and the two had come to love each other. It was no surprise, that. Fareed could not have found a more perfect mate for Viktor than Rose. And vice versa.

Fareed backed off from the full intensity of his own emotions, his deepest fears, his constant obsessive worries about all that had happened, might happen, could happen.

"The blood banks in the rooms belowground ...," Viktor said.

"Adequate," said Seth. "Seen to. All of it. Done. I just told you. Dr. Gilman is in charge, and no one will come up out of the cellars until she gives the word. Our beloved savants have their labs down there, their computers, their projects. They are as indifferent to fear as they are to anything pertaining to the world outside their own field. The electrical systems protecting them cannot fail. It would be flat-out ridiculous of the Voice to launch an attack on this location."

"And the Voice is such a paragon of the reasonable and the effective," said Viktor suddenly under his breath. It was as if he couldn't stop himself, and Fareed realized suddenly how very tense and miserable Viktor was, and how excited also.

Viktor wore his usual short-sleeved white polo shirt and jeans, though he was carrying over his arm a soft brown suede jacket for the journey. He was a blond-haired young male in splendid health with a well-developed and muscular frame that was almost that of a man rather than a boy. But in this day and age a man might develop height and musculature until he was thirty. Viktor was six foot one, already one inch taller than his father.

"I'm sorry. Forgive me for interrupting," Viktor said, with his usual courtesy. He'd been deferential to Seth and Fareed and his mother all his life.

"No one expects you to be indifferent to what's happening," Seth said gently. "But we've been through it. This is the way. This is our decision."

Viktor nodded, but his eyes and complexion flashed with a warmth that no preternatural body could ever give forth. Fareed could hear Viktor's accelerated pulse. He caught the faint scent of the sheen of sweat covering Viktor's upper lip and forehead.

In the dim lunar light of the monitors Viktor looked so much like Lestat it was uncanny. He wasn't angry as he looked at Fareed. In fact, it didn't seem that Viktor had ever been angry in his entire short life with anyone. But he did look hurt and young and anxious. His unruly blond hair made him look more boyish than he was. It was long now, almost to his shoulders. And that is how the Vampire Lestat looked most of the time in videos, photos, and even the iPhone snapshots taken of him by vampire paparazzi in Paris.

"I beg you one more time, both of you," Viktor said now in a trembling but rather deep voice, "to bring us over. Rose and me, bring us over! Do it before we make this journey to New York and you plant us, two helpless human beings, in a colony of the Undead."

He had always had a way of being painfully honest and cutting through superfluous language as if every language he had ever learned was a "second tongue." And that voice, that deep male voice, indicated a maturity he really didn't possess yet, as far as Fareed was concerned.

"You won't be in a colony of the Undead," said Fareed reprovingly. "You'll be in our own apartments, and you'll be safe with our guards."

Oh, he was beautifully behaved, never rash, Viktor, and never rebellious, and seldom if ever emotional in a confusing way, but he was a boy of nineteen, one year younger biologically than Rose, almost to the month, by sheer coincidence, and both of them were children.

"Bring us over," Viktor whispered, glancing from Fareed to Seth.