“When the boy had finished, he knelt with his arms around Armand’s neck as if he actually savored the icy flesh. And I could remember the night Lestat first came to me, how his eyes seemed to burn, how his white face gleamed. You know what I am to you now.
“Finally, it was finished. He was to sleep, and Armand locked the brass gates against him. And in minutes, heavy with his meal, he was dozing, and Armand sat opposite me, his large, beautiful eyes tranquil and seemingly innocent. When I felt them pull me towards him, I dropped my eyes, wished for a fire in the grate, but there were only ashes.
“ ‘You told me to say nothing of my origin, why was this?’ I asked, looking up at him. It was as if he could sense my holding back, yet wasn’t offended, only regarding me with a slight wonder. But I was weak, too weak for his wonder, and again I looked away from him.
“ ‘Did you kill this vampire who made you? Is that why you are here without him, why you won’t say his name? Santiago thinks that you did.’
“ ‘And if this is true, or if we can’t convince you otherwise, you would try to destroy us?’ I asked.
“ ‘I would not try to do anything to you,’ he said, calmly. ‘But as I told you, I am not the leader here in the sense that you asked.’
“ ‘Yet they believe you to be the leader, don’t they? And Santiago, you shoved him away from me twice.’
“ ‘I’m more powerful than Santiago, older. Santiago is younger than you are,’ he said. His voice was simple, devoid of pride. These were facts.
“ ‘We want no quarrel with you.’
“ ‘It’s begun,’ he said. ‘But not with me. With those above.’
“ ‘But what reason has he to suspect us?’
“He seemed to be thinking now, his eyes cast down, his chin resting on his closed fist. After a while which seemed interminable, he looked up. ‘I could give you reasons,’ he said. ‘That you are too silent. That the vampires of the world are a small number and live in terror of strife amongst themselves and choose their fledglings with great care, making certain that they respect the other vampires mightily. There are fifteen vampires in this house, and the number is jealously guarded. And weak vampires are feared; I should say this also. That you are flawed is obvious to them: you feel too much, you think too much. As you said yourself, vampire detachment is not of great value to you. And then there is this mysterious child: a child who can never grow, never be self-sufficient. I would not make a vampire of that boy there now if his life, which is so precious to me, were in serious danger, because he is too young, his limbs not strong enough, his mortal cup barely tasted: yet you bring with you this child. What manner of vampire made her, they ask; did you make her? So, you see, you bring with you these flaws and this mystery and yet you are completely silent. And so you cannot be trusted. And Santiago looks for an excuse. But there is another reason closer to the truth than all those things which I’ve just said to you. And that is simply this: that when you first encountered Santiago in the Latin Quarter you… unfortunately… called him a buffoon.’
“ ‘Aaaaah.’ I sat back.
“ ‘It would perhaps have been better all around if you had said nothing.’ And he smiled to see that I understood with him the irony of this.
“I sat reflecting upon what he’d said, and what weighed as heavily upon me through all of it were Claudia’s strange admonitions, that this gentle-eyed young man had said to her, ‘Die,’ and beyond that my slowly accumulating disgust with the vampires in the ballroom above.
“I felt an overwhelming desire to speak to him of these things. Of her fear, no, not yet, though I couldn’t believe when I looked into his eyes that he’d tried to wield this power over her: his eyes said, Live. His eyes said, Learn. And oh, how much I wanted to confide to him the breadth of what I didn’t understand; how, searching all these years, I’d been astonished to discover those vampires above had made of immortality a club of fads and cheap conformity. And yet through this sadness, this confusion, came the clear realization: Why should it be otherwise? What had I expected? What right had I to be so bitterly disappointed in Lestat that I would let him die. Because he wouldn’t show me what I must find in myself? Armand’s words, what had they been? The only power that exists is inside ourselves…
“ ‘Listen to me,’ he said now. ‘You must stay away from them. Your face hides nothing. You would yield to me now were I to question you. Look into my eyes.’
“I didn’t do this. I fined my eyes firmly on one of those small paintings above his desk until it ceased to be the Madonna and Child and became a harmony of line and color. Because I knew what he was saying to me was true.
“ ‘Stop them if you will, advise them that we don’t mean any harm. Why can’t you do this? You say yourself we’re not your enemies, no matter what we’ve done…’
“I could hear him sigh, faintly. ‘I have stopped them for the time being,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want such power over them as would be necessary to stop them entirely. Because if I exercise such power, then I must protect it. I will make enemies. And I would have forever to deal with my enemies when all I want here as a certain space, a certain peace. Or not to be here at all. I accept the scepter of sorts they’ve given me, but not to rule over them, only to keep them at a distance.’
“ ‘I should have known,’ I said, my eyes still fixed on that painting.
“ ‘Then, you must stay away. Celeste has a great deal of power, being one of the oldest, and she is jealous of the child’s beauty. And Santiago, as you can see, is only waiting for a shred of proof that you’re outlaws.’
“I turned slowly and looked at him again where he sat with that eerie vampire stillness, as if he were in fact not alive at all. The moment lengthened. I heard his words just as if he were speaking them again: ‘All I want here is a certain space, a certain peace. Or not to be here at all.’ And I felt a longing for him so strong that it took all my strength to contain it, merely to sit there gazing at him, fighting it. I wanted it to be this way: Claudia safe amongst these vampires somehow, guilty of no crime they might ever discover from her or anyone else, so that I might be free, free to remain forever in this cell as long as I could be welcome, even tolerated, allowed here on any condition whatsoever.
“I could see that mortal boy again as if he were not asleep on the bed but kneeling at Armand’s side with his arms around Armand’s neck. It was an icon for me of love. The love I felt. Not physical love, you must understand. I don’t speak of that at all, though Armand was beautiful and simple, and no intimacy with him woul
d ever have been repellent. For vampires, physical love culminates and is satisfied in one thing, the kill. I speak of another kind of love which drew me to him completely as the teacher which Lestat had never been. Knowledge would never be withheld by Armand, I knew it. I would pass through him as through a pane of glass so that I might bask in it and absorb it and grow. I shut my eyes. And I thought I heard him speak, so faintly I wasn’t certain. It seemed he said, ‘Do you know why I am here?’
“I looked up at him again, wondering if he knew my thoughts, could actually read them, if such could conceivably be the extent of that power. Now after all these years I could forgive Lestat for being nothing but an ordinary creature who could not show me the uses of my powers; and yet I still longed for this, could fall into it without resistance. A sadness pervaded it all, sadness for my own weakness and my own awful dilemma. Claudia waited for me. Claudia, who was my daughter and my love.
“ ‘What am I to do?’ I whispered. ‘Go away from them, go away from you? After all these years…’
“ ‘They don’t matter to you,’ he said.
“I smiled and nodded.
“ ‘What is it you want to do?’ he asked. And his voice assumed the most gentle, sympathetic tone.