Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles 11)

She felt Louis's right hand around her forehead, turning her face towards him, and his left hand lightly touching her waist. He bent his head and pressed his ear against her neck. His skin wa

s silky, just like Uncle Lestan's skin had always been, cold, but like silk.

"Rose, Lestat's come. He's at the house. He's waiting for you. You're safe. You're all right."

She stopped sobbing only when she saw him.

He stood in the front hallway with his arms out, her uncle Lestan, her beloved uncle Lestan, an angel to her, timeless, unchanged, forever beautiful.

"My Rose," he whispered. "My darling Rose."

"They took Viktor, Uncle Lestan," she sobbed. "Someone took him!" The tears ran down her face as she looked up at him. "Uncle Lestan, he's gone."

"I know, my darling. And we will get him back. Now come to me," he said, his powerful arms closing around her. "You are my daughter."

21

Rhoshamandes

The Devil's Gambit

HE WAS in a rage. But then he'd been in a rage since he'd struck down Maharet, since he'd doubled over with the machete in his hands, confronted with what he'd done, and the ghastly realization that he could not possibly undo it.

And now that he had Viktor in his hands, which the Voice had so furiously urged him to achieve, he was more than ever boiling with rage, against the Voice, against himself, against the wide world in which he'd survived for so long and in which he now found himself trapped and certain of nothing except that he had not wanted this! He personally had never wanted it.

He stood on the broad wooden deck of this house in Montauk on the shore of Long Island--staring out over the cold glassy Atlantic. What in the name of Hell was he to do now? How could he possibly achieve what the Voice insisted he must achieve?

The word had gone out over the airwaves immediately that Viktor had been kidnapped. Benji Mahmoud had been cagey and brilliant: an ancient immortal had committed a dastardly deed (yes, the vile little vampiric Edward R. Murrow had used that term) in kidnapping "one cherished by all the elders of the tribe" and he had called to the Children of the Night throughout the world to listen for the malignant heart and mind of this ancient one, to discover this one's evil designs and to call the numbers at Trinity Gate in New York as soon as the monster and his helpless victim were discovered!

Benedict sat in the spacious barren all-too-modern "living room" of this glorified peasants' hut on this expensive coast only hours by car from New York staring at the screen of the laptop as he listened to Benji's reports.

"Lestat de Lioncourt has arrived! There are now innumerable elders amongst us. But again, I caution you, Children of the Night, lay low where you are. Do not seek to come here. Let the elders meet. Give the elders a chance to stop the destruction. And search, search for this evil outlaw among us who has kidnapped one of our own from us. Search but take care. An ancient one can conceal his thoughts, but he cannot conceal the powerful beating of his heart, nor can he entirely conceal a low humming sound emanating from his very person.

"Call us with all reports. And please, I beg the rest of you, stay off the phone lines until the kidnap victim is found or until you have further reports from me."

Benedict shut down the volume. He got up from the low-slung synthetic couch that smelled vaguely of petrol chemicals.

"But that's just it," said Benedict. "There are no young blood drinkers around here, none, they were all driven out of the New York hunting ground a long time ago. We've scanned this entire area. There's nobody out here but us, and even if they do find us, what does it matter, as long as I'm standing right beside him when you make your case to Fareed?"

It struck Rhoshamandes again as it had in the jungles of the Amazon that Benedict had been displaying an amazing gift for battle and intrigue ever since this nasty business had started in earnest.

Who would have expected the mild-mannered and genuinely loving Benedict to drive his machete into Maharet's skull at the moment when Rhosh was frozen with panic?

Who would have expected him to so handily carry the violent but helpless young Viktor to the bedroom upstairs and lock him securely in the large windowless bathroom, remarking so coolly, "Best place for a mortal, obviously, with all that plumbing."

Who would have expected Benedict to have been so handy with hardware-store chains and padlocks to secure that bathroom prison with such simple and clever gestures, piling a store of wood and nails and a hammer nearby if further security measures were needed?

And who but Benedict would have outfitted the bathroom before-hand with every conceivable amenity--scented candles, toilet articles, even popular magazines, a "microwave oven" for the cooking of the stacks of canned foods he'd bought, and heaps of plastic forks and knives and spoons as well as paper bowls and dishes. He'd even included a little refrigerator in the bath full of carbonated sodas and a bottle of the finest Russian vodka, and had thrown in several soft new blankets for the boy and a pillow so he could sleep "comfortably" on the tiled floor when exhaustion eventually got the best of him.

"We don't want him to panic," Benedict had said. "We want him to remain calm and cooperative so this thing can be finished."

By day the boards and nails would make his escape impossible, and for now, when he became panicky, he could press the intercom to speak to his captors.

That he had not done yet. Perhaps he was simply too angry to utter coherent words. That would not have been surprising.

One thing was certain. Someone very powerful had taught this human how to completely lock off his mind from all telepathic intrusion. He was as skilled at that as any scholarly member of the Talamasca. And as far as Rhosh knew, no mortal or immortal could open a telepathic line to others without opening himself to intrusion. So that meant the boy wasn't frantically attempting to send messages to others. And maybe he didn't know how. The vampires who brought him up might have taught him many things, but not how to be a human psychic.

Rhoshamandes didn't much believe in human telepathy anyway. But he had to stop thinking about this! He had to stop thinking about all the different ways this spectacular gambit might fail, and it strongly occurred to him that he ought to call Trinity Gate now and return the boy and throw himself on the mercy of the gathering blood drinkers!