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

It was as if something invisible from within Garekyn was reaching into the other, the other who was sucking the blood so powerfully that Garekyn was shuddering and nauseated and suddenly terrified.

Garekyn fought it with all his strength, driving the creature back against the other wall so hard that the creature's head struck the marble with a dull sound. Now it was battle, the creature lunging for Garekyn again; and this time, applying all his might, Garekyn drove the creature back again and down, slamming his face hard against the porcelain of the sink. Something broke, but with a sound so soft Garekyn could barely hear it.

Blood flowed on the dirty white porcelain. The blood glittered! The darkness rose up to take hold of Garekyn again. The creature's hands closed on Garekyn's neck, but with his left hand, Garekyn grabbed a full hank of the creature's hair and swung his head down again and again on the edge of the sink.

The skull caved, the blood shot out of the creature's mouth like the jet of a fountain--glittering. Amel. Armand. Names called in a void that might replace the little lavatory room if Garekyn didn't hang on with every bit of stubbornness he could muster.

Again and again, he slammed the head down, this time on the chrome faucet and he felt the head close around the faucet as the faucet pierced the skull.

"Armand!" roared the creature as the blood bubbled from its lips.

Without hesitation, unsure of his strength, and determined to control all that would happen henceforth, Garekyn ripped the head forward and turned the head with all his might so as to break the creature's neck.

Done!

The creature dropped to the floor, his face appearing to slide from his skull like a mask, blood flooding from his eyes and his mouth and once again the blood glittered, glittered, as if with myriad tiny pulsing bits of living light, skittering, swirling in the blood.

The creature lay in a heap.

Garekyn put his fingers into the blood and lifted the blood to his lips. A zinging sensation swept through all his limbs. He licked and licked at the blood. Amel. Motion, voices, another realm breaking in.

He reached down and ripped with his fingers at the white flesh, scraping it loose from the gleaming white bones of the skull and there in a great fissure he saw what must have been the brain, sizzling and hissing with tiny pinpoints of light.

Images swam in his ken. The twins, the Mother, the devouring of the brain, Benji talking on and on about the old tales, the new tales...Amel in the brain.

He squatted down beside the battered heap of the creature, and he scooped up the brain and forced it into his own mouth, his throat locking in nausea even as he did it. But the nausea vanished. The world vanished.

An immense web, a web so intricate and beautiful and vast it appeared to compass the Heavens, and the stars pulsing in it like tiny beings, alive, calling, pleading. Dim echo rising as if it were a splash of blood on a wall: Armand, help me, attacked, murdered, not human, not human!

Retching, doubled over, Garekyn held the dissolving brain in his mouth, pressing against it with his tongue, the great web growing brighter and brighter.

He opened his eyes. He was sprawled against the cold white toilet. Blood all over his clothes. Blood all over his hands.

Unthinking, he shot to his feet, unlatched the door, and fled, not back into the restaurant but out a back passage and into a dim alley. Smashing into large glistening black plastic sacks and stacks of cardboard boxes he blundered, nearly falling, slipping in puddles of grease and water, running as fast as he could, with no idea of what lay ahead of him.

He heard someone pursuing him. He knew he was meant to hear this, hear the boots striking the stones. On he ran only to see a wall rise up in front of him.

He pivoted just in time to recognize the white-faced being who closed in on him. Beatific face, auburn hair! Armand. The master of Trinity Gate. Upwards, they rose, higher and higher until the wind was roaring in his ears. And once again, fang teeth were in his neck, and this time a chorus of voices crying in the great empty darkness.

All be warned. Something not human!

"Don't kill me!" he pleaded without a voice. "Help me. I didn't want to kill him. He hurt me. I didn't want to kill him. I wanted to know--." He had no voice and no body. He was just this sweetness and this pain, this swoon, and the voices rising all around him speaking words of condemnation and menace but in tones so tender and melodious it was like singing. He saw the circuit of his blood again and felt pain throughout as the blood was drawn out of him, his heart beating faster and faster as if it would explode.

Amel, it is you? Are you here? It is you after all these centuries, are you here? This is Garekyn.

He was high above the city, and he was dying. No escape this time, no matter what the Parents had said. And if the pain is too great to bear, you will lose consciousness, but you will not die. And you will slowly revive and restore, no matter what they have done to you. Snow without end, snow and ice. Go into the ice and freeze. Mountains of ice. Snow without end.

"They sent you here to destroy me, didn't they?" said Amel, Amel of old in his great office in Atalantaya. Warm air. Windows filled with the spectacle of the city's towers, like a forest made of glass. "Well, didn't they?"

Darkness. You will not die....

And how horrible that it should come finally like this, at the hands of monsters, this magnificent world, to see it no more, to lose it, to lose all of it, without my understanding anything!--

Before him suddenly, a sky of endless blue and the great translucent city of Atalantaya exploding with smoke and fire! Amel cried out against it. Or was it he, Garekyn, screaming in defiance as the towers melted, shattered, the great dome cracking, the whole city tilting and sliding into the boiling sea? My death, just my death. Because that was long ago and they are all dead.

4

Lestat