He nodded. "As I said, you know the answers to your questions. So why do you continue to ask them? Why do you lock yourself here with your grief?"
I didn't say anything. I saw her eyes again. Why can't you believe in me!
"Have you forgiven me for all of it?" I asked suddenly.
"You weren't to blame," he said. "She was waiting, listening. Sooner or later something would have stirred the will in her. The danger was always there. It was as much an accident as the beginning, really, that she woke when she did." He sighed. He sounded bitter again, the way he'd been in the first nights after, when he had grieved too. "I always knew the danger," he murmured. "Maybe I wanted to believe she was a goddess; until she woke. Until she spoke to me. Until she smiled."
He was off again, thinking of the moment before the ice had fallen and pinned him helplessly for so long.
He moved away, slowly, indecisively, and then went out onto the terrace and looked down at the beach. Such a casual way of moving. Had the ancient ones rested their elbows like that on stone railings?
I got up and went after him. I looked across the great divide of black water. At the shimmering reflection of the skyline. I looked at him.
"Do you know what it's like, not to carry that burden?" he whispered.
"To know now for the first time that I am free?"
I didn't answer. But I could most certainly feel it. Yet I was afraid for him, afraid perhaps that it had been the anchor, as the Great Family was the anchor for Maharet.
"No," he said quickly, shaking his head. "It's as if a curse has been removed. I wake; I think I must go down to the shrine; I must burn the incense; bring the flowers; I must stand before them and speak to them; and try to comfort them if they are suffering inside. Then I realize that they're gone. It's over, finished. I'm free to go wherever I would go and do whatever I would like." He paused, reflecting, looking at the lights again. Then, "What about you? Why aren't you free too? I wish I understood you."
"You do. You always have," I said. I shrugged.
"You're burning with dissatisfaction. And we can't comfort you, can we? It's their love you want." He made a little gesture towards the city.
"You comfort me," I answered. "AH of you. I couldn't think of leaving you, not for very long, anyway. But you know, when I was on that stage in San Francisco ..." I didn't finish. What was the use of saying it, if he didn't know. It had been everything I'd ever wanted it to be until the great whirlwind had descended and carried me away.
"Even though they never believed you?" he asked. "They thought you were merely a clever performer? An author with a hook, as they say?"
"They knew my name!" I answered. "It was my voice they heard. They saw me up there above the footlights."
He nodded. "And so the book, The Queen of the Damned," he said.
No answer.
"Come down with us. Let us try to keep you company. Talk to us about what took place."
"You saw what took place."
I felt a little confusion suddenly; a curiosity in him that he was reluctant to reveal. He was still looking at me.
I thought of Gabrielle, the way she would start to ask me questions and stop. Then I realized. Why, I'd been a fool not to see it before. They wanted to know what powers she'd given me; they wanted to know how much her blood had affected me; and all this time I'd kept those secrets locked inside. I kept them locked there now. Along with the image of those dead bodies strewn throughout Azim's temple; along with the memory of the ecstasy I'd felt when I'd slain every man in my path. And along with yet another awful and unforgettable moment: her death, when I had failed to use the gifts to help her!
And now it started again, the obsession with the end. Had she seen me lying there so close to her? Had she known of my refusal to aid her? Or had her soul risen when the first blow was struck?
Marius looked out over the water, at the tiny boats speeding towards the harbor to the south. He was thinking of how many centuries it had taken him to acquire the powers he now possessed. Infusions of her blood alone had not done it. Only after a thousand years had he been able to rise towards the clouds as if he were one of them, unfettered, unafraid. He was thinking of how such things vary from one immortal to another; how no one knows what power is locked inside another; no one knows perhaps what power is locked within oneself.
All very polite; but I could not confide in him or anyone just yet.
"Look," I said. "Let me mourn just a little while more. Let me create my dark images here, and have the written words for friends. Then later I'll come to you; I'll join you all. Maybe I'll obey the rules. Some of them, anyway, who knows? What are you going to do if I don't, by the way, and haven't I asked you this before?"
He was clearly startled.
"You are the damnedest creature!" he whispered. "You make me think of the old story about Alexander the Great. He wept when there were no more worlds to conquer. Will you weep when there are no more rules to break?"
"Ah, but there are always rules to break."
He laughed under his breath. "Burn the book."
"No."
We looked at each other for a moment; then I embraced him, tightly and warmly, and I smiled. I didn't even know why I'd done it, except that he was so patient and so earnest, and there had been some profound change in him as there had been in all of us, but with him it was dark and hurtful as it had been with me.
It had to do with the whole struggle of good and evil which he understood exactly the way I did, because he was the one who had taught me to understand it years ago. He was the one who had told me how we must wrestle forever with those questions, how the simple solution was not what we wanted, but what we must always fear.
I'd embraced him also because I loved him and wanted to be near to him, and I didn't want him to leave just now, angry or disappointed in me.
"You will obey the rules, won't you?" he asked suddenly. Mixture of menace and sarcasm. And maybe a little affection, too.
"Of course!" Again I shrugged. "What are they, by the way?
I've forgotten. Oh, we don't make any new vampires; we do not wander off without a trace; we cover up the kill."
"You are an imp, Lestat, you know it? A brat."
"Let me ask you a question," I said. I made my hand into a fist and touched him lightly on the arm. "That painting of yours, The Temptation of Amadeo, the one in the Talamasca crypt . . ."
"Yes?"
"Wouldn't you like to have it back?"
"Ye gods, no. It's a dreary thing, really. My black period, you might
say. But I do wish they'd take it out of the damned cellar. You know, hang it in the front hall? Some decent place."
I laughed.
Suddenly he became serious. Suspicious.
"Lestat!" he said sharply.
"Yes, Marius."
"You leave the Talamasca alone!"
"Of course!" Another shrug. Another smile. Why not?
"I mean it, Lestat. I'm quite serious. Do not meddle with the Talamasca. Do we understand each other, you and I?"
"Marius, you are remarkably easy to understand. Did you hear that? The clock's striking midnight. I always take my little walk around the Night Island now. Do you want to come?"
I didn't wait for him to answer. I heard him give one of those lovely forbearing sighs of his as I went out the door.
Midnight. The Night Island sang. I walked through the crowded galleria. Denim jacket, white T-shirt, face half covered by giant dark glasses; hands shoved into the pockets of my jeans. I watched the hungry shoppers dipping into the open doorways, perusing stacks of shining luggage, silk shirts in plastic, a sleek black manikin swathed in mink.
Beside the shimmering fountain, with its dancing plumes of myriad droplets, an old woman sat curled on a bench, paper cup of steaming coffee in her trembling hand. Hard for her to raise it to her lips; when I smiled as I passed she said in a quavering voice: "When you're old you don't need sleep anymore."