Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles 11)

Crossing Fifth Avenue, he moved towards the doors of the mansion, already playing with her, following her as he glided into the soft sweet unmistakably sad melody of the etude and racing with her into the more violent phrasing. He heard her hesitate and then her playing moved on, slowly again, and his violin sang with it, weaving high above her. The tears rolled down Antoine's cheeks; he couldn't stop them, though he knew they would be tinged with blood.

On and on he went with her, moving beneath her into the deepest and darkest notes he could make on the G string.

She stopped.

Silence. He thought he would collapse. In a blur he saw mortals gathered around him, watching him, and suddenly he brought down his bow, ripping away from the gentle caressing music of Chopin into the strong full melodies of Bartok's Concerto for Violin, playing both orchestra lines and the violin lines in a torrent of wild, dissonant agonized notes.

He saw nothing suddenly, though he knew the crowd had thickened and no music answered him from the keyboard of Sybelle. But this was his heart, his song now, as he plunged deeper and deeper into the Bartok, his tempo speeding up, becoming almost inhuman, as on and on he went.

His soul sang with the music. It became his own melodies and glissandi as his thoughts sang with it.

Let me in, I beg you, let me in. Louis, let me in. Made by Lestat, never having had a chance to know you, never meant to harm you or Claudia, those long-ago times, forgive me, let me in. Benji, my guiding light, let me in. Benji, my consolation in unending darkness, let me in. Armand, I beg you, find a place in your heart for me, let me in.

But soon his words were lost, he was no longer thinking in words or syllables but only in the music, only in the throbbing notes. He was swaying wildly as he played. He no longer cared whether or not he looked or sounded human, and deep in his heart he was aware that if he were to die now, he would not revolt against it, not with any molecule of his being, because the death sentence would come upon him by his own hand and for what he truly was. This music was what he truly was.

Silence.

He had to wipe the blood from his eyes. He had to, and slowly, he reached for his handkerchief and then held it trembling, unable to see.

They were close. The mortal crowd meant nothing to him. He could hear that powerful heart, that ancient heart that had to be Armand's heart. Cold preternatural flesh touched his flesh. Someone had taken the handkerchief from him, and this one was blotting his eyes for him, and wiping the thin streaks of blood from his face.

He opened his eyes.

It was Armand. Auburn hair, face of a boy, and the dark burning eyes of an immortal who'd roamed for half a millennium. Oh, this truly was the face of a seraph right off the ceiling of a church.

My life is in your hands.

On all sides of him, people were applauding, men and women clapping for his performance--just innocent people, people who didn't know what he was. People who didn't even notice these blood tears, this fatal giveaway. The night was bright with streetlamps, and rows and rows of yellow windows, and the daytime warmth was coming up from the pavements, and the tall tender saplings shed their very tiny leaves in a warm breeze.

"Come inside," said Armand softly. He felt Armand's arm around him. Such strength. "Don't be afraid," said Armand.

There stood the incandescent Sybelle smiling at him, and beside her the unmistakable Benji Mahmoud in a black fedora with his small hand extended.

"We'll take care of you," said Armand. "Come inside with us."

8

Marius and the Flowers

FOR HOURS, he'd been painting furiously, his only light in the old ruined house an old-fashioned lantern.

But the lights of the city poured in the broken-out windows, and the great roar of the traffic on the boulevard was like the roar of a river, quieting him as he painted.

His left thumb hooked into an old-fashioned wooden palette, his pockets filled with tubes of acrylic paint, he used only one brush until it fell to pieces, covering the broken walls with brilliant pictures of the trees, the vines, the flowers he'd seen in Rio de Janeiro and the faces, yes, always the faces of the beautiful Brazilians he encountered everywhere, walking through the nighttime rain forest of Corcovado, or on the endless beaches of the city, or in the noisy garishly lighted nightclubs he frequented, collecting expressions, images, flashes of hair or shapely limbs as he might have collected pebbles from the frothy margin of the ocean.

All this he poured into his feverish painting, rushing as if at any moment the police would appear with the old tiresome admonitions. "Sir, you cannot paint in these abandoned buildings, we have told you."

Why did he do it? Why was he so loath to interfere with the mortal world? Why didn't he compete with those brilliant native painters who spread their murals out in the freeway underpasses and on crumbling favela walls?

Actually, he would be moving on to something much more challenging, yes, he had been giving it a lot of thought, wanting to move to some godforsaken desert place where he might paint on the rocks and the mountains confident that all would restore themselves in time as the inevitable rains would wash away all that he'd created. He wouldn't be competing with human beings there, would he? He wouldn't hurt anybody.

Seemed for the last twenty years of his life, his motto had been the same as many a doctor had taken in this world: "First, do no harm."

The problem with retiring to a desert place was that Daniel would hate it. And keeping Daniel happy was the second rule of his life, as his own sense of well-being, his own capacity to open his eyes each evening with some desire to actually rise from the dead and celebrate the gift of life, was connected to and sustained by making Daniel happy.

And Daniel was certainly happy now in Rio de Janeiro. Tonight Daniel was hunting in the old Leda section of Rio, feasting slowly and stealthily among the dancing, singing, partying crowds, drunk no doubt on music as well as on blood. Ah, the young ones with their insatiable thirst.

But Daniel was a disciplined hunter, master of the Little Drink in a crowd, and a slayer of the evildoer only. Marius was certain of that.