"He seeks the comforts of the hearth, strictly forbidden, " he screamed, stamping his foot and shaking his garments. "He goes into the very palaces of carnal pleasure, and mingles there with mortals as they play music! As they dance! "
"Stop your raving! " I said. But in truth, I wanted to hear him out. He plunged forward, sticking his finger in my face.
"No rituals can purify him! " he shouted. "Too late for the Dark Vows, the Dark Blessings... "
"Dark Vows? Dark Blessings? " I turned to the old queen. "What do you say to all this? You're as old as Magnus was when he went into the fire Why do you suffer this to go on? " Her eyes moved in her head suddenly as if they alone possessed life, and there came that racing laughter out of her again.
"I shall never harm you, young one, " she said. "Either of you. " She looked lovingly at Gabrielle.
"You are on the Devil's Road to a great adventure. What right have I to intervene in what the centuries have in store for you? " The Devil's Road. It was the first phrase from any of them that had rung a clarion in my soul. An exhilaration took hold of me merely looking at her. In her own way, she was Magnus's twin.
"Oh yes, I am as old as your progenitor! " She smiled, her white fangs just touching her lower lip, then vanishing. She glanced at the leader, who watched her without the slightest interest or spirit. "I was here, " she said, "within this coven when Magnus stole our secrets from us, that crafty one, the alchemist, Magnus . . . when he drank the blood that would give him life everlasting in a manner which the World of Darkness had never witnessed before. And now three centuries have passed and he has given his pure and undiluted Dark Gift to you, beautiful child! " Her face became again that leering, grinning mask of comedy, so much like Magnus's face.
"Show it to me, child, " she said, "the strength he gave you. Do you know what it means to be made a vampire by one that powerful, who has never given the Gift before? It's forbidden here, child, no one of such age conveys his power! For if he should, the fledgling born of him should easily overcome this gracious leader and his coven here. "
"Stop this ill-conceived lunacy! " the boy interrupted. But everyone was listening. The pretty dark-eyed woman had come nearer to us, the better to see the old queen, and completely forgetting to fear or hate us now.
"One hundred years ago you'd said enough, " the boy roared at the old queen, with his hand up to command her silence. "You're mad as all the old ones are mad. It's the death you suffer. I tell you all this outlaw must be punished. Order shall be restored when he and the woman he made are destroyed before us all. " With renewed fury, he turned on the others.
"I tell you, you walk this earth as all evil things do, by the will of God, to make mortals suffer for his Divine Glory. And by the will of God you can be destroyed if you blaspheme, and thrown in the vats of hell now, for you are damned souls, and your immortality is given you only at the price of suffering and torment. " A burst of wailing commenced uncertainly.
"So there it is finally, " I said. "'The whole philosophy and the whole is founded upon a lie. And you cower like peasants, in hell already by your own choosing, enchained more surely than the lowest mortal, and you wish to punish us because we do not? Follow our examples because we do not! " The vampires were some of them staring at us, others in frantic conversations that broke out all around. Again and again they glanced to the leader and to the old queen. But the leader would say nothing. The boy screamed for order:
"It is not enough that he has profaned holy places, " he said, "not enough that he goes about as a mortal man. This very night in a village in the banlieue he terrified the congregation of an entire church. All of Paris is talking of this horror, the ghouls rising from the graves beneath the very altar, he and this female vampire on whom he worked the Dark Trick without consent or ritual, just as he was made.
" There were gasps, more murmurs. But the old queen screamed with delight.
"These are high crimes, " he said. "I tell you, they cannot go unpunished. And who among you does not know of his mockeries on the stage of the boulevard theater which he himself holds as property as a mortal man! There to a thousand Parisians he flaunted his powers as a Child of Darkness! And the secrecy we have protected for centuries was broken for his amusement and the amusement of a common crowd. " The old queen rubbed her hands together, cocking her head to the side as she looked at me.
"Is it all true, child? " she asked. "Did you sit in a box at the Opera? Did you stand there before the footlights of the Theatre-Francaise?
Did you dance with the king and queen in the palace of the Tuileries, you and this beauty you made so perfectly? Is it true you traveled the boulevards in a golden coach? " She laughed and laughed, her eyes now and then scanning the others, subduing them as if she gave forth a beam of warm light.
"Ah, such finery and such dignity, " she continued. "What happened in the great cathedral when you entered it? Tell me now! "
"Absolutely nothing, madam! " I declared.
"High crimes! " roared the outraged boy vampire. "These are frights enough to rouse a city, if not a kingdom against us. And after centuries in which we have preyed upon this metropolis in stealth, giving birth only to the gentlest whispers of our great power. Haunts we are, creatures of the right, meant to feed the fears of man, not raving demons! "
"Ah, but it is too sublime, " sang the old queen with her eyes on the domed ceiling. "From my stone pillow I have dreamed dreams of the mortal world above. I have heard its voices, its new music, as lullabies as I lie in my grave. I have envisioned its fantastical discoveries, I have known its courage in the timeless sanctum of my thoughts. And though it shuts me out with its dazzling forms, I long for one with the strength to roam it fearlessly, to ride the Devil's Road through its heart. " The gray-eyed boy was beside himself.
"Dispense with the trial, " he said, glaring at the leader. "Light the pyre now. " The queen stepped back out of my way with an exaggerated gesture, as the boy reached for the torch nearest him, and I rushed at him, snatching the torch away from him, and heaving him up towards the ceiling, head over heels, so that he came tumbling in that manner all the way down. I stamped out the torch. That left one more. And the coven was in perfect disorder, several rushing to aid the boy, the others murmuring to one another, the leader stock-still as if in a dream. And in this interval I went forward, climbed up the pyre and tore loose the front of the little wooden cage. Nicolas looked like an animated corpse. His eyes were leaden, and his mouth twisted as if he were smiling at me, hating me, from the other side of the grave. I dragged him free of the cage and brought him down to the dirt floor. He was feverish, and though I ignored and would have concealed it if I could, he shoved at me and cursed me under his breath. The old queen watched in fascination. I glanced at Gabrielle, who watched without a particle of fear. I drew out the pearl rosary from my waistcoat and letting the crucifix dangle, I placed the rosary around Nicolas's neck. He stared stuporously down at the little cross, and then he began to laugh. The contempt, the malice, came out of him in this low metallic sound. It was the very opposite of the sounds made by the vampires. You could hear the human blood in it, the human thickness of it, echoing against the walls. Ruddy and hot and strangely unfinished he seemed suddenly, the only mortal among us, like a child thrown among porcelain dolls. The coven was more confused than ever. The two burntout torches still lay untouched.