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

I sat in the first pew, gazing at that altar, at the polished silver tabernacle and the crucifix above it, and beyond the great oval portrait of Saint Louis of France, in all his royal splendor riding off to fight the Crusades on his white charger.

My beloved architect and chief of staff had just left me, after assuring me that all firefighting systems in the village and in the castle on the hill were as they should be. And yes, the inn was prepared for the guests who would arrive sometime after sunrise, and yes, they'd be brought up to the castle right before nightfall.

Only Arion remained with me.

I stared at the altar and Arion looked at me, Arion who had his own sorrow to impart, his own story of those under the spell of the Voice who'd burnt his villa to the ground, and left his orchards and gardens in a blackened ruin.

"I saw her die," he had said. He had told the whole tale to me and now the chapel no longer echoed with the sound of his soft voice.

"I am certain it was Mona. I saw her red hair. I saw her die but it seemed she went in an instant, that she didn't suffer. And as for Quinn, I don't know if he was there, but if he was not there, then where is Quinn and why did he never come back? For three nights I waited in those miserable ruins, burnt and in agony, waiting for him. I never heard from him again. If he were alive, surely, he would have come back, or he would have gone to you. Or he would have gone to the Talamasca."

"She's dead," I said quietly. " 'Would she had died hereafter...when there might have been time to mourn for her.' " My voice was no fair reflection of what I really felt, this pain for which there is no remedy, not even the passage of time. This ache that will never go away. This grief for all the mistakes I'd made and all those I'd lost.

"I knew they were dead last year," I said in a small voice, "when we gathered at Trinity Gate and they hadn't come, because they would have come, had they been living. I knew. I thought it was in Maharet's compound that they died, when Khayman was first driven by the Voice to burn the archive in which they'd been studying. I had letters from them. They had loved studying with Maharet. They wondered that I wasn't there, studying with them, talking to Maharet...."

What was I saying? What did it matter? Maharet and Mona and Quinn gone.

"I am so sorry," said Arion.

He spoke so low no mortal spying on us could have heard him. He talked of his grief, his pain, of those he'd loved, loved for so long, now gone, of his paradisal palace being destroyed, and of all the things within those walls he'd collected over the years, destroyed, and how he'd gone off to Roland, Roland who had been his old friend from times when Pompeii had been a thriving city, and of how Roland had taken pity on him and how, thanks to Roland, the blood of the strange non-human Derek had restored him.

"Very well," I said. "You're here with us now."

"Yes, and I mean to stay," he said. "That is, if you will have me."

"This is your Court and I am your Prince, and of course you may stay," I said.

I closed my eyes. I was remembering Mona's voice, Mona's laugh, Mona the witch who had become Mona the blood drinker, naive, brash, courageous, and in love with the Dark Gift and with all the gifts of the world of day and the world of night.

"Come," said Arion. "Let's go back up the hill. Your friend Louis is outside, and he's waiting for you."

I followed him down the aisle. Before we left I looked up at the narrow stained-glass windows. The five joyful mysteries of the Rosary were depicted down one side of the nave; and the five sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary depicted down the other side. Very much more beautiful than in my time. But strange, wasn't it, that the scent of wax was the same, and the scent of wood. And the flicker of the vigil lights before the Virgin's statue exactly the same as it had been over two centuries ago.

I stopped to light two candles, one for each of them.

The little phone suddenly vibrated in my pocket as if it were a tiny rodent come awake to plead for mercy. And I could hear Benji shouting as he ran towards the church.

"She is on the line," cried Benji. "It is Kapetria."

16

Derek

AIX-EN-PROVENCE

HE WASN'T FRIGHTENED anymore. Not now. Not with Kapetria holding him in her arms. He wasn't frightened. Oh, how beautiful she was, his Kapetria, with her hair swept back into a braid pinned to her head, in her fine saffron silk blouse and sleek black skirt, legs sheathed in translucent black nylon, and feet so dainty in her high-heeled shoes, Kapetria here, the real Kapetria sprung to life in a cloud of French scent, her mouth rouged, and eyes as dark as the night sky above them. No, no longer afraid.

She kissed his tears, kissed his eyelids, made the others stop questioning him. "Quiet now, both of you! And to think, this is your brother, and after all this time, what do you do, but interrogate him?"

And indeed they had, as to how in the world he'd ever been held captive for all those precious years, and why hadn't he done this to escape, and that to escape, and finally she had said,

"Welf and Garekyn, if I had a riding crop, I'd whip both of you."

Dertu sat there on the long low modern couch with the most placid expression on his face, studying the others intently, never saying a word himself, just studying them as if he were learning marvelous things from their gestures, their expressions, their horrid questions.

No more fear. No more tears. Kapetria had her arms around him.

He'd been terrified when he'd called the radio phone line, speaking as fast as he could in the old tongue, giving the number of the throwaway cell to his kindred along with the actual address of the old farmhouse outside Derry in which he and Dertu had found temporary lodgings, and terrified when the smiling gentlemen came to take them to the private airport on the other side of town, and terrified when the little plane had taken off right into the bloodred sunset sky--certain they would crash into the North Sea and never reach France. He'd been terrified when they landed in the early winter dark, and the big black car took them racing over the dimly lighted roads and into the quaint city of Arles and to a small hotel where the keys to a private car had been waiting at the desk for them. He'd been terrified as they walked two miles on narrow, crooked little streets to find the car to which the keys belonged and terrified as Dertu drove this roaring little monster down more dimly lighted roads to the pretty city of Aix and finally up into the hills to a lovely whitewashed house with white shutters where Kapetria and Garekyn and Welf had been waiting for them.