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

"You're our Prince," Cyril had declared. "Nothing has changed that. You think we're going to let anybody take you down? Grow up!"

The meeting with Rhoshamandes had taken place in the Outer Hebrides on his island of Saint Rayne in the formidable and famous castle that Rhoshamandes had built for himself a thousand years ago.

"I simply told him what had happened," Lestat explained afterwards. "I gave him a little demonstration. Nothing as elaborate as setting my right hand on fire, but he took the point. I thought he should know it was true, because I knew he wouldn't believe all the rumors and the extravagant claims. And I didn't want him believing all the predictions of rapid-fire deterioration. After all, he is one of us."

After all, he is one of us.

Cyril and Thorne attested to the fact that Rhoshamandes had received the Prince with cordiality, inviting him in and taking him on a little tour of the castle. They had gone out on the Benedicta together. Rhoshamandes had been candid about fearing the Replimoids. But Lestat had assured Rhosh that the Replimoids were occupied with far more important things than settling any old score. And the Replimoids had given their word.

Had the two discussed what the Replimoids would do next?

"No," said Lestat. "That's no one's concern now but mine."

Rhoshamandes had given Lestat a copy of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. And Lestat had been seen reading it more than once.

"I see a change in him," said Marius. "It isn't resignation. It isn't courage. It's practicality. He's always been practical. He knows it's about to come to a head."

"We have no hope of safely detaching the spirit from him," said Fareed. "But there has to be a way to do it. There has to be."

"Leave it to Kapetria," said Seth. "Whatever we do is likely to be a blunder compared to what she might do."

It wasn't that she had brought any superior skill to the experiment of stopping Lestat's heart. She hadn't. She'd simply come to assist, to watch, to try to calculate when the experiment might have to be brought to an end. But when it came to the possible fate of Amel, of Amel's transfer into another body, Kapetria was the only one who knew anything at all.

Before she left on the night of the heart-stopping experiment, Fareed had given her a large vial of vampiric blood--from his own veins. She had asked for that. And since she'd gifted him with a vial of her own blood, how could he refuse?

He was surprised that she'd waited so long to ask for it, actually. But then he could not really construct a path for her because there was simply too much he didn't know. But Fareed and Seth talked about it all the time.

"Garekyn saw the etheric brain in the biological brain," Seth pointed out whenever they discussed it. "He described it as something sizzling, sparkling, that he could see. Well, we can't see it. And just possibly Kapetria can see the very thing she'll seek to remove from Lestat's head without killing him. Just possibly she has developed instruments that could see it because she herself can see it."

If this was a possibility, Kapetria never said. After the experiment, she had left the Chateau in the same sleek dark blue Ferrari that had brought her there. And the Prince had laid down the law that no one was to try to follow her, or track her license plate, or hack the facial recognition software systems of Europe for any clues as to where the Replimoids were based.

"We made the decision to leave her alone and we leave her alone," said Lestat. "She knows what she's going to do." He had repeated this since with the same rationale he gave that night. "I know what she's going to do because I know what I would do if I were her."

Whenever three or more ancient ones were gathered together with him, they ended up pounding Fareed with questions on the entire matter, whether the Prince was present or not. But Fareed had never come up with any new answers.

The Prince himself never asked questions. But surely he listened. Surely he heard all the theories being floated, all the back-and-forth amongst Fareed and Seth and Flannery Gilman. Viktor was working with Flannery now; Viktor had started "reading medicine" with his mother, as they used to call it in the old days. Viktor felt driven to find some solution. And Viktor worried about many things.

"What is to stop every blood drinker from making a multitude of other blood drinkers?" asked Viktor. "Before, everyone had agreed; no more making of blood drinkers until the Court had established some rules. But now? Without the problem of Amel, what's to stop our ranks from increasing again until there are wars in the streets?"

Also Viktor

wasn't at all convinced the modern world would ignore the vampires forever as fictional. True, the bias against vampire beliefs in modern medicine was so widespread and rigid that any deviating scientist could be ruined for life. His own mother, Flannery, had been marginalized and destroyed because she had claimed to believe in the vampires. This was still happening to doctors and scientists in parts of the world. But Viktor said it couldn't go on forever. Governments must be investigating. Somebody would round up evidence of the indisputable truth.

Seth said no. The Prince said no. "They'll never believe in us any more than they believe in aliens from other planets or near-death experiences, or the existence of ghosts. And there is no indisputable truth. One doctor's indisputable truth is another man's fantastic lie."

Fareed's head ached. Too much to study; too many directions to take; too many questions; he lacked the discipline now that always upheld him in the past.

And Amel. What went on with Amel?

It was still possible to hear the voice of Amel as Lestat was hearing it--Fareed's telepathic powers had always been considerable. Anytime he was close to Lestat he could eavesdrop. Unless the two wanted to be sealed up in solitude. Then no one could telepathically penetrate their exchanges any more now than before. When Amel wanted to be overheard, he made it obvious. He laughed; he raged; he screamed; he sang in the ancient tongue. When he didn't, he spoke to Lestat alone.

Was all peace and harmony between the two of them?

Marius said no. Amel was gaining ever-greater ascendency over Lestat's body. Lestat tried to conceal this. But Fareed knew it was true. Fareed could discern those brief periods when the Prince allowed Amel to take over--to lift a pen and scrawl innumerable pictographs over pages and pages of paper, or to pick up the cell phone and tap in with one thumb a number that only Amel knew.

Fareed knew when this was happening that Lestat was watching all of it with the same hard focus with which Fareed and Seth watched it. But what about the moments when Lestat didn't want to give in to this interior command center? Did he really like waking up one night last week at sunset to discover the white marble walls of his vault covered in jagged and bizarre alphabetical writing in the ancient tongue?--all of this done apparently during daylight hours with a felt-tip pen that Amel had pilfered without Lestat's knowledge yet obviously using Lestat's left hand?

"That's how he did it," Lestat had said when he recounted the incident. "I was clamping down on my right hand so hard he couldn't use it, and while he had me distracted like that, he used my left hand to slip that pen into my pocket, or so he has bragged. I suppose he's ambidextrous. Likely they're all ambidextrous. I should have known."