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

"No," said Fareed as they left the apartment together and made their way down the dimly lighted corridor. "We'll find out what she wanted others to think she was doing in your laboratories, no more and no less."

Gregory didn't want to admit that. And Seth walked on ahead impatiently.

Moments later Fareed and Seth were alone in the large crypt beneath the Chateau that they shared.

Neither had a taste for coffins or other Western romantic trappings of the grave, and this room was a simple though elegant bedchamber. It had a dark carpeted floor, a broad bed in the ancient Egyptian style with gilded lions supporting it, and a solitary standing lamp that gave a warm light through a parchment shade. The walls were painted with the golden sand and green palm trees of ancient Egypt.

Fareed slipped off his boots and lay down among the silk-covered pillows. For the first time in many months, he was actually tired, tired in his bones, and wanted to sleep for a while.

But Seth stood with his arms folded staring off as if he were not in this tiny windowless chamber, but gazing out at the snow falling all around them on the mountainside.

"There were always stories in those ancient days," he said, "of wise men and healers who came out of the sea. I spoke to many a teller of tales in this or that city of such legends. And there were tales of a great kingdom that had been swallowed by the ocean in more places than one. These wise men and women were survivors of that great kingdom, or so some thought. I used to put hope in such legends. I used to think I could one day find one of these wise men or women and discover from that person some great and salvific truth."

Fareed had never heard the word "salvific" spoken by anyone. He said nothing. He had never had any such idealistic or romantic beliefs. Reared by two entirely modern parents, Fareed had been protected as much from mythology as he had been from religion. His had been the world of science and scientific obsessions all of his life. The great gift of immortality meant that Fareed would live on and on discovering one scientific truth after another, witnessing the world of science make discoveries in the future that would so dwarf the present time that it would seem primitive and superstitious to later generations. And Fareed would share this future. Fareed would be there.

But he could feel a great sadness in Seth. He wanted to say that it was all fascinating, that there was nothing to be sad about, but he knew better than to question any mood or emotion from Seth, who in his heart of hearts was unreachable when it came to speculations as to what this world was, or what he himself was, and why he was alive six thousand years after he'd been born.

"Remember the description of the two intertwined in each other's arms," Fareed murmured sleepily. "Why don't you come and lie here beside me and let us make that picture now and sleep? Two in one another's arms as if carved from stone?"

Seth obeyed. He kicked off his boots and lay down beside Fareed, his right arm over Fareed's chest.

Fareed breathed deeper, pushing away the slight panic he always felt at losing consciousness with the rise of the sun. He moved closer to Seth, and closed his eyes, and began almost immediately to dream. Fire, smoke rising in a great dark column to the Heavens...

He barely heard the dull throb of the cell phone in Seth's pocket, or Seth's voice as he answered. Seth was so much stronger than Fareed. Seth had an hour yet of wakefulness before the paralysis would come over him. And Fareed barely heard Seth's suddenly angry voice, but he tried very hard to hear it, to follow what Seth was saying.

"But how? Why did they move to take him prisoner on their own?"

Fareed could hear the voice of Avicus on the phone. Avicus, who months ago had gone to California to guard the old medical compound there as it was thoroughly evacuated. Avicus, who had been gracious to do that. But then Avicus would have done anything for Fareed and Seth and for the tribe.

"But they shouldn't have gone alone," Seth was saying, "just the two of them! How perfectly stupid. They should have waited."

He felt Seth beside him again, and the arm catching hold of him and bringing him closer to Seth.

"Another blood drinker destroyed by the one called Garekyn," Seth said. "A maverick in California, name of Garrick. Two of them caught the intelligence that the being had used his passport at a local hotel. Avicus hadn't meant for them to act on it. They thought they could take the creature prisoner easily, and bring him back as far as New York. They wanted to be heroes. The creature decapitated Garrick and got away with his head."

Fareed felt the pain, though he couldn't move or speak. Ah, foolish young ones. And this fiasco would inflame the wanderers throughout the area, increasing the danger that the thing called Garekyn would be destroyed on sight by the next band of assailants. It was not even midnight in Los Angeles.

Seth was voicing the grief and frustration for both of them. But Fareed could no longer hear what he was saying. In fact, he was dreaming. He was seeing that city again, that city tumbling into the sea in flames, and smoke so black it turned day into night as it spread out across the sky in greasy rolling clouds, that city winking out below, collapsing in on itself as the ocean swallowed it. Thunder. Lightning, rain falling from Heaven. All the world trembling.

12

Derek

WHAT IF HE had fallen? What if someone had seen him? Perhaps the fiendish Rhoshamandes had lied about the island being deserted. What if there were human guards who had taken him prisoner, and even now he was being put into some cell in this very dungeon, too far away for Derek to hear him crying for help?

It was morning, cold and bleak, and the fiends had not, as far as Derek could tell, returned to this citadel to sleep. He had not heard their voices, or their little cell-phone radios, nor any sound to indicate anyone was in the castle except for him. But the castle was vast. He'd seen it from the air. How could he know what the fortress contained?

For hours he had sat here alone, hunched over, shivering in his torn shirt and thin pants, barefoot, and desperate for the approach of his son on the outside of the door.

His new left arm seemed no different from the old limb, the fingers flexing easily as always, the skin the same dark tone as all the rest of his skin. It seemed like a dream that he had ever felt that ax coming down on his shoulder. He regretted that he'd not been conscious to see the new arm growing ou

t of him, forming, developing a hand, achieving completion. He regretted that he hadn't seen the severed limb formed into a man. But maybe he had to be unconscious for these prodigious accomplishments to take place.

The fire still burned, but the great charred log in the middle was cooling now, and all that was left of the brush and leaves that had once filled the fireplace were embers. Soon there would be no heat in this abysmal room at all.

Derek's greatest armor against his fear, however, had been new ancient memories, the flood of new memories awakened in him by the formation of his son.

He was quite certain that the Parents had never breathed a word to him and his companions to indicate that they could multiply in this way or any way. Had Kapetria known of this and kept it secret? It was to Kapetria that they had given the superior knowledge, which the Parents had said is all they needed to survive and complete their mission. How vividly he saw the Parents now explaining that they were to fulfill their mission, how vividly he heard their soft voices as they explained that it was for "this purpose and this purpose alone" that they had been made.