The Queen Of The Damned (The Vampire Chronicles 3)

He stood against the frame of the terrace door, with his arms folded, one ankle crossed over the other. The lights out there behind him. In the ancient world had there been anything like it? The spectacle of an electrified city, dense with towers glowing like narrow grids in an old gas fire?

He'd clipped his hair short; he wore plain yet elegant twentieth-century clothes: gray silk blazer and pants, and the red this time, for there was always red, was the dark turtleneck shirt.

"I want you to put the book aside and come join us," he said. "You've been locked in here for over a month. "

"I go out now and then," I said. I liked looking at him, at the neon blue of his eyes.

"This book," he said. "What's the purpose of it? Would you tell me that much?"

I didn't answer. He pushed a little harder, tactful though the tone was.

"Wasn't it enough, the songs and the autobiography?"

I tried to decide what made him look so amiable really. Maybe it was the tiny lines that still came to life around his eyes, the little crinkling of flesh that came and went as he spoke.

Big wide eyes like Khayman's had a stunning effect.

I looked back at the computer screen. Electronic image of language. Almost finished. And they all knew about it; they'd known all along. That's why they volunteered so much information: knocking, coming in, talking, then going away.

"So why talk about it?" I asked. "I want to make the record of what happened. You knew that when you told me what it had been like for you. "

"Yes, but for whom is this record being made?"

I thought of all the fans again in the auditorium; the visibility; and then those ghastly moments, at her side, in the villages, when I'd been a god without a name. I was cold suddenly in spite of the caressing warmth, the breeze that came in from the water. Had she been right when she called us selfish, greedy? When she'd said it was self-serving of us to want the world to remain the same?

"You know the answer to that question," he said. He drew a little closer. He put his hand on the back of my chair.

"It was a foolish dream, wasn't it?" I asked. It hurt to say it. "It could never have been realized, not even if we had proclaimed her the goddess and obeyed her every command. "

"It was madness," he answered. "They would have stopped her; destroyed her; more quickly than she ever dreamed. "

Silence.

"The world would not have wanted her," he added. "That's what she could never comprehend. "

"I think in the end she knew it; no place for her; no way for her to have value and be the thing that she was. She knew it when she looked into our eyes and saw the wall there which she could never breach. She'd been so careful with her visitations, choosing places as primitive and changeless as she was herself. "

He nodded. "As I said, you know the answers to your questions. So why do you continue to ask them? Why do you lock yourself here with your grief?"

I didn't say anything. I saw her eyes again. Why can't you believe in me!

"Have you forgiven me for all of it?" I asked suddenly.

"You weren't to blame," he said. "She was waiting, listening. Sooner or later something would have stirred the will in her. The danger was always there. It was as much an accident as the beginning, really, that she woke when she did. " He sighed. He sounded bitter again, the way he'd been in the first nights after, when he had grieved too. "I always knew the danger," he murmured. "Maybe I wanted to believe she was a goddess; until she woke. Until she spoke to me. Until she smiled. "

He was off again, thinking of the moment before the ice had fallen and pinned him helplessly for so long.

He moved away, slowly, indecisively, and then went out onto the terrace and looked down at the beach. Such a casual way of moving. Had the ancient ones rested their elbows like that on stone railings?

I got up and went after him. I looked across the great divide of black water. At the shimmering reflection of the skyline. I looked at him.

"Do you know what it's like, not to carry that burden?" he whispered. "To know now for the first time that I am free?"

I didn't answer. But I could most certainly feel it. Yet I was afraid for him, afraid perhaps that it had been the anchor, as the Great Family was the anchor for Maharet.

"No," he said quickly, shaking his head. "It's as if a curse has been removed. I wake; I think I must go down to the shrine; I must burn the incense; b

ring the flowers; I must stand before them and speak to them; and try to comfort them if they are suffering inside. Then I realize that they're gone. It's over, finished. I'm free to go wherever I would go and do whatever I would like. " He paused, reflecting, looking at the lights again. Then, "What about you? Why aren't you free too? I wish I understood you. "