Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (The Vampire Chronicles 12)

"Maybe she can tell us all plenty," I said. "And maybe she can tell us things we don't want to know. But she's going soon, that's the word, and nobody can persuade her to remain. She and her kindred will go--just as soon as they know that Roland and Rhoshamandes are no longer a threat."

Amel was goading me. My thirst was unbearable. And once more he spoke of innocent blood.

What's so delicious about innocent blood? What makes it like spring blossoms falling apart in your hands, or a bird fluttering in the prison of your fingers, or baby skin, or women's breasts?

Behind us, the music and light contrived to pull a golden veil over the ballroom. The raw impassioned voice of a violin broke loose from the desperate currents of the waltz and sang, as violins always do, of loneliness. Was that Arjun or had Antoine taken up his fiddle?

I moved Gremt off across the hard crush of the snow until we were swallowed by the shadows of a corner. The village was not in view because we were too far from the edge, and the night above was so clear that the stars seemed a thousand times their usual number. The snow shone as white as the moon. I could see it streaked and gleaming on the forested mountains all around us, and see it trimming the battlements and see the flecks of it in Gremt's hair.

This body was as beautiful to me as any I'd ever embraced and Amel was singing with the waltz so low I could scarcely hear him. I moved Gremt's soft black hair back from his neck, my left hand taking hold of his strong right arm, and then I went in, wondering just what might happen to this contrived body under such an assault. Had he ever let anyone else do this? Certainly Teskhamen, his partner in the Talamasca, had done this. No. Never. The blood gushed so fast and so hard I felt it wet on my lips and on my face as never happens, but I couldn't turn back, it was coming too fast, and the heart was sounding with the regularity of a fire bell.

Sweet, luscious blood, blood with salt, blood with all that blood is meant to be, and his mind broke open like the golden meat of a peach in the old days when I was alive and loving the summer fruit, the intoxicating sweetness of the fresh fruit from the trees in the village, right here, this village, me and Nicki lying on a haystack, eating fresh fruit till our lips were sore.

I saw a firmament of stars and a great war of vaporous beings faceless and howling and battling one another, with broken phrases and taunts and cries of pain, and then the earth below with its great expanses of black water shining in the light of Heaven and the land planted with a thousand clusters of man-made lights and shimmering roofs and thin spidery roads, and the wind roared in my ears, and we were Gremt, both of us, Gremt walking on one of those roads, walking with palpable steps, and when we turned, out of the great dark woods around us came a stinging torrent of freezing air and dead leaves that hit us full force like a rain of nails. Anger, anger everywhere we turned, the anger of the spirits, and then he was standing before me and he had his arms out, and he a

sked, Am I flesh and blood? Am I? What am I? The image wavered, weakened, dimmed. Dear God, was he dying? It took all my strength to draw back. Amel cried out and hissed and there came the pain again, the pain in my hands as he tried to force me to hold on and the pain shooting up the back of my neck. Gremt fell down into the snow.

Stop it, damn you, stop it, or I swear it, I will surrender you to the prison of a vessel from which you cannot hurt us!

It was finished. Nothing vanishes quite like pain--when pain does vanish, that is. Because most of the time pain never does.

I knelt down beside Gremt. He was drawn and almost as white as the snow, and his eyes were half-mast and gleaming the way the eyes of an animal can gleam when the animal's dead.

"Gremt!" I turned his head towards me with both hands. Warm, warm with life, warm with the will to live.

Slowly his eyes grew wide and clear.

For an endless moment we were together in silence. Snow fell. Light soundless snow.

"Was it good, the blood?" he whispered.

I nodded. "It was good," I said.

"What have I done?" he whispered. He appeared to be looking past me, at the stars. Did he see spirits up there? Did he hear them in some way that I could not?

"Are they watching us?" I asked.

"They're always watching," he said. "What else do they have to do? Yes, they're watching. And they wonder what I've done, just as I wondered what Amel had done. And how many more will descend?"

I moved to help him to his feet, but he begged me to wait, to give him another moment. His breathing was uneven and his heartbeat had a ragged edge to it.

Finally he was ready. Surely no mortal on the planet would think him anything but human, except perhaps some gifted witch who knew all the many mysteries, she might see through him, but not the others. And Amel had been right that Gremt could no longer disperse the particles. I didn't have to ask. I knew it was true. Because if the particles could have been sent flying, it would have happened when I broke into his blood.

I led him back into the swirling golden light and music of the ballroom. He was sleepy, sluggish, but otherwise unharmed. We brushed past dancers, and those who stood stranded on the edge, and Avicus appeared in the corner of my eye and beside him the red-haired Thorne, and Cyril's dark faintly amused face.

"All hail the mighty Prince," Cyril muttered. But the smile wasn't mocking and neither were the words. Just Cyril commenting on the state of things. And Cyril's comments always had an ironic twang. Tonight he was dressed for the ball in black-and-white finery, and it was amusing to see that--Cyril, the haunter of caves and shallow graves, all decked out to the golden cuff links. I almost laughed.

"Yeah, the mighty Prince," I said in a low snarling voice. "Just what we all need right now, right?" That was my best New York gangster imitation and Cyril loved it, and laughed under his breath.

I helped Gremt to sit down on the only couch I could find in deep shadow, a brocade settee lost beneath a sconce of burnt dead candles and wisps of acrid smoke. I held him steady.

"What did you see?" I asked. "What did you see in me?"

"Hope," Gremt said. "Hope, you'll get us all through this."

Not at all what I expected.

"And you didn't see him?"