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

"Evil?" I asked. "Are we going to start arguing about the nature of good and evil?"

"No need," said Gremt under his breath. "We know what evil is. And you know what it is." He looked up at me. They were much alike in their demeanor, Teskhamen and Gremt, but then that made perfect sense--that all these years Gremt had been modeling his manner on that of Teskhamen.

Magnus was changing again, the flesh appearing to fade like an image in an old photograph, and in a silent shimmer I saw the old one, the narrow beak of a nose, the hunched shoulders and wrists of knobby bone, before he recollected himself and became the smooth handsome one again.

"Be what you like, monsieur!" I said to Magnus, leaning towards him. "Yea gods, don't hold on to any certain image for me." I meant to be helpful, kind. I wanted to thaw the ice.

But he turned and glared at me as if I'd made some unforgivable transgression. His eyes were narrow, and if he'd been a blood drinker still, he might have blasted me with his anger even without directing it. As it was, the anger made him all the more brilliant. I could see the faint tracery of blood swimming in the whites of his eyes. I could see his lips trembling. Does a ghost feel all of this?

Teskhamen rose to his feet.

"Prince, I'm going to leave you now with these two. Again, we are glad you've come."

"Don't go," I said. "I want to talk to all of you. Look, I know I've offended you and disappointed you." I didn't wait for them to respond. "It's been six months since you came to see me at Trinity Gate in New York," I said. "I promised you I would meet with you, invite you to Court. I promised, but then so much has happened. And I've been negligent, and I'm sorry. I came here myself to tell you this. And Amel wanted me to come, urged me not to put it off any longer. I couldn't bear the thought of sending some messenger or formal invitation. I came here because I am sorry for not coming to you sooner."

This clearly caught all of them off guard. I had definitely roused the interest of Gremt though he did not seem at all content. And a sadness came over Magnus's illusory features of which he did not seem to be in control.

What was wrong here? Something was wrong. There was a cloud over this group, a cloud that had thickened before I'd ever come to the door.

Only Teskhamen remained smooth. He was seated again.

"Thank you," he said. "I'm glad, very glad. I want to know you," he said. "I want to know you well enough that I can come and go at Court and it will be nothing out of the ordinary. I've heard of the Friday-night balls, the theater, your little performance of Macbeth, and the chapel wedding of Rose and Viktor." He smiled. "All this speaks of vitality," he said, "vibrant communal life, something that's never before united the Undead. Yea gods, are we done forever with cults and ancient worship? And I know you're exhausted. Others have told me. They worry that it wears you out, and I don't blame you for leaving the rules to a council. You can't make the rules and be this powerful creative monarch."

"Then it's decided," I said. "You'll come and often. You'll come tonight and tomorrow, whether I'm there or not, and you'll come when you wish. You'll walk through the front doors, just as blood drinkers do who are coming from all over the world. Macbeth is only the first of the plays I want to do, by the way. I want to move on to Othello. The music composed for the balls is being recorded and collected, and Marius is painting again, though how he finds the time I don't know. He's covering new bedchambers and salons with his Italianesque murals."

I realized I was talking too fast. I was excited. He'd spoken of exactly the aspects of the Court that excited me, playing Macbeth myself on our little stage for an audience of two hundred blood drinkers, young and old, and the Great Sevraine providing her enchanting Lady Macbeth with a deep current of feeling that astonished her companions. Of course we had our critics--the cynical ones, the dark, deeply conservative ones who wanted to know why blood drinkers would bother with anything, presumably, but savaging humans for their blood.

You can't build a culture with Devils out of Hell!

"The Hell I can't" had been my answer. I went on for a moment, talking about Notker's musicians and how new musicians had appeared to make up our orchestras. I spoke of Antoine, my long-lost fledgling, writing concertos again for the violin. And then a sudden darkness came over me, because Antoine wanted to bring over into the Blood a musical secretary who could transcribe for him all he performed and recorded, and that had brought up the central question I couldn't yet face:

If this is all good, then why not bring people into it for our own purposes? Hadn't Fareed done it, making vampires out of brilliant doctors and scientists? Were we a thing that was good, or weren't we? And if I believed we were good, and believed the Dark Gift was just that, a gift, then I had to allow Antoine to find himself the musical scribes he wanted. And then what?

Teskhamen might have been reading my mind, but I wasn't sure of it. There are subtle rules about such things, matters of courtesy, matters of not stabbing into the mind of the other without permission to revert to the telepathic.

"Look, there's another matter," I said. "Some of the others are afraid of you. That's the plain truth. They're afraid of you. You, a blood drinker, who claims a greater loyalty to the Talamasca than you do to us. And Gremt here, an incarnate spirit. I've always seen ghosts, but many a blood drinker has never seen ghosts, not at least that he or she was aware of."

I had their full attention as I continued. "This shouldn't have happened, this silence and neglect of you on my part. And please, please don't call me Prince. I'm Lestat, that's

all. Lestat de Lioncourt on legal documents. And to all and sundry, simply Lestat."

"Oh, come on, you love being called Prince," said Amel. "You vain preening peacock of a monster. You love it. You coxcomb. Tell them about the crown jewels lavished on you by the vampires from Russia, all that Romanov booty soaked in blood."

"Shut up," I said aloud.

"And the crown expressly made for you by that old vampire from Oxford!"

"If you don't shut up--."

"What?" he asked. "What will you do if I don't shut up? What can you do? Are you looking at them, the way they're looking at you, the way they're studying you and listening to my voice inside you? Are you aware of their calculating evil minds!"

"Why did you want to come here?" I asked him without moving my lips.

Silence. It was like dealing with a child.

Then Teskhamen spoke. "He doesn't make life easy for you, does he?" he asked.

"No," I responded. "But he makes it very exciting. It's not so bad most of the time. Not at all." This was a magnificent understatement. I loved Amel. "And for long periods, he leaves," I said. "He goes running off to spy on others. But he can make life a perfect Hell if he wants to with all his noise, questions, demands, and denials. But that's all he can do."