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

In the realm of astronomy, I have ascertained almost certainly that no asteroid comparable to Bravenna has been seen recently in the night sky. I've combed the legends of the planet and find no evidence that Bravenna or some substitute of Bravenna ever returned to Earth.

As you must infer from what I've just said, I don't know what actually happened on Bravenna that last night as we watched from Atalantaya. I don't know whether Bravenna fired some advanced weaponry on the planet, or simply exploded showering the planet with meteors which precipitated cataclysmic floods, volcanoes, fires, and eventually a rising of the sea level and a deadly winter which locked the planet for centuries in ice and snow. I have read widely among those who speculate on just such an early cataclysm and I have studied this in light of the beautiful legends of the lost kingdom of Atlantis, and there is no doubt in my mind that Atlantis is Atalantaya, and that there is indeed confirmation of a catastrophe that brought her ruin--eventually raising the level of the seas and changing the weather all over the planet.

I have discovered many things...but no discovery in all my years has ever been as important as my discovery of you, the blood drinkers, and your legends of Amel.

I have no doubt that Amel lives inside you. I have no doubt that this is our Amel. But he is also your Amel. I know this, and I see what you are and how precious life is to you, as it is to us. And please do understand that we see you as a priceless form of life just as we see ourselves as a priceless form of life.

And it is through you and your kindred that we have found one another again, and through Rhoshamandes's bloody blundering assault on Derek that we have the knowledge that we can increase our numbers without even understanding how or why. We are disposed to love you, to revere the things that we have in common, and we ask for your love.

There are many things more I could say, many observations I could make. But I have told all the truth that matters here, all the truth that may matter to Amel. We've come to you at great risk to ourselves because of Amel. But also because you are our brothers and sisters in immortality; we see kindred in you. And we trust you'll see kindred in us. In those centuries when we opened our eyes on a primitive and harsh world, we found our loneliness as immortals all but unendurable. Derek suffered the same fate. And Garekyn was suffering it when he approached Trinity Gate. We are ready to need you, if you are ready to need us.

I have told you everything, and now I see there are two hours perhaps left to the night before you have to leave us and we have to leave you. I'm yours for that time, and I hope forever, really. Ask me what you would; and I'll try to tell you the truth.

20

Lestat

SHOCK. SILENCE. NO one moved or spoke. All eyes remained on Kapetria. Then I heard Armand's telepathic message. Mark the danger.

Kapetria was right about there being two hours before sunrise. But I myself did not have the full two hours. I had at the most one hour and was very glad that the tale had been told in its entirety at one time.

Was I suspicious, incredulous, as to all we'd heard? No.

I sensed that Kapetria had presented everything truthfully. And I also knew that the tale had had a powerful impact on Amel. Throughout the telling, I had felt one subtle convulsion in Amel after another, and sometimes what amounted to a considerable disturbance, and I knew that the other vampires at the table, able to read my mind, had some dim sense of these responses as well.

At the moment when Kapetria had described the explosion of Bravenna, I saw the same images that I'd seen repeatedly in my dreams. Others at the table had seen the same.

And at that point, the point where Amel in Kapetria's story had cried out, I felt a searing and inexplicable pain in my head.

That pain had leveled somewhat but it was still with me, and it produced a deep sense of alarm in me that I tried desperately to conceal from everyone else. I could not recall Amel ever causing physical pain in me. Yes, he'd tried to move my limbs more than once, and I'd felt a tingling and cramping in the limb. But that had not been pain. This was pain. And I knew perfectly well that the human brain had no pain receptors, and that brain tumors cause pain in humans because of the pressure they create on pain-sensing blood vessels and nerves inside the human brain.

So how was my invisible friend causing this pain? I wasn't going to ask him because others at the table would know that I was asking him, and I just didn't want them to know what was going on.

Amel gave me to know now--pain or no pain--that he wanted to ask Kapetria a question and to talk to her.

But Fareed immediately started to ask her any number of questions about luracastria and generating Replimoids that I didn't understand. The others all seemed absorbed in this--a discussion of thermoplastic and genomes, of the absolutely remarkable strength of spider silk in the natural world, and so forth and so on. Kapetria clearly loved it, this pure scientific talk replete with abstractions of dizzying opacity, and I could see Seth loved it and to some extent so did David. Gregory too was enjoying it. But I wanted to speak.

"Interrupt," said Amel, "and now." There was a sudden pain in my right hand, and then my hand jumped on the table. Kapetria stopped in midsentence and turned to me.

"Amel wants to ask you a question," I said uneasily.

She was riveted. "Please, what is he saying!" she asked. She seemed hardly able to contain herself. Derek, Welf, and Garekyn were equally eager to know.

"There's something I have to tell you first," I said. "This spirit sometimes doesn't tell the truth."

A searing pain behind my eyes nearly blinded me. I tried to lift my right hand to cover my eyes, and I couldn't. The pain intensified so that I found myself rising out of the chair, and pushing the chair backwards. I'd never known a pain inside my body of this intensity, and I was forced to close my eyes! I made some involuntary sound.

"All right, you scoundrel!" I whispered. "Stop it, or I won't tell her the question! You understand?"

The pain stopped, but only for about two seconds. It came back with renewed force. It was so intense my eyes closed again, and when I tried to reach once more for my head, my right hand was shot through and through with pain, pain ripping through every blood vessel and tendon. I could feel my nails drumming on the table, and when I struggled to open my eyes, I saw only a blinding light.

Something touched my hand. I could hear people mo

ving. I felt a hand on my right arm. The pain continued, throbbing, as it seemed to swell behind my forehead and behind my eyes, and then I felt something being put in my hand. It was a pen.

Someone was putting my fingers around the pen, while at the same time lifting my hand, and then putting it down on paper. My left hand was covering my face. I could hear the scratch marks as my right hand wrote or drew with the pen.

Stop the pain, stop it, do you hear me, stop it!