"This power "-sputtering as if all day long he had been saying the words over with the same intensity, and it does not really matter that now I am present- "this power that made all the lies meaningless, this dark power that soared over everything, this truth that obliterated. . .
" No. Language. No truth. The wine bottles were empty, the food devoured. His lean arms were hardened and tense for the struggle-but what struggle?-his brown hair fallen out of its ribbon, his eyes enormous and glazed. But suddenly he pushed against the wall as if he'd go through it to get away from me-dim remembrance of their drinking from him, the paralysis, the ecstasy-yet he was drawn immediately forward again, staggering, putting his hands out to steady himself by taking hold of things that were not there. But his voice had stopped. Something breaking in his face.
"How could you keep it from me! " he whispered. Thoughts of old magic, luminous legend, some great eerie strata in which all the shadowy things thrived, an intoxication with forbidden knowledge in which the natural things become unimportant. No miracle anymore to the leaves falling from the autumn trees, the sun in the orchard.
No. The scent was rising from him like incense, like the heat and the smoke of church candles rising. Heart thumping under the skin of his naked chest. Tight little belly glistening with sweat, sweat staining the thick leather belt. Blood full of salt. I could scarce breathe. And we do breathe. We breathe and we taste and we smell and we feel and we thirst.
"You have misunderstood everything. " Is this Lestat speaking? It sounded like some other demon, some loathsome thing for whom the voice was the imitation of a human voice. "You have misunderstood everything you have seen and heard. "
"I would have shared anything I possessed with you! " Rage building again. He reached out. "It was you who never understood, " he whispered.
"Take your life and leave with it. Run. "
"Don't you see it's the confirmation of everything? That it exists is the confirmation-pure evil, sublime evil! " Triumph in his eyes. He reached out suddenly and closed his hand on my face.
"Don't taunt me! " I said. I struck him so hard he fell back wards, chastened, silent. "When it was offered me I said no. I tell you I said no. With my last breath, I said no. "
"You were always the fool, " he said. "I told you that. " But he was breaking down. He was shuddering and the rage was alchemizing into desperation. He lifted his arms again and then stopped. "You believed things that didn't matter, " he said almost gently. "There was something you failed to see. Is it impossible you don't know yourself what you possess now? " The glaze over his eyes broke instantly into tears. His face knotted. Unspoken words coming from him of love. And an awful self-consciousness came over me. Silent and lethal, I felt myself flooded with the power I had over him and his knowledge of it, and my love for him heated the sense of power, driving it towards a scorching embarrassment which suddenly changed into something else. We were in the wings of the theater again; we were in the village in Auvergne in that little inn. I smelled not merely the blood in him, but the sudden terror. He had taken a step back. And the very movement stoked the blaze in me, as much as the vision of his stricken face. He grew smaller, more fragile. Yet he'd never seemed stronger, more alluring than he was now. All the expression drained from his face as I drew nearer. His eyes were wondrously clear. And his mind was opening as Gabrielle's mind had opened, and for one tiny second there flared a moment of us together in the garret, talking and talking as the moon glared on the snow-covered roofs, or walking through the Paris streets, passing the wine back and forth, heads bowed against the first gust of winter rain, and there had been the eternity of growing up and growing old before us, and so much joy even in misery, even in the misery-the real eternity, the real forever-the mortal mystery of that. But the moment faded in the shimmering expression on his face.
"Come to me, Nicki, " I whispered. I lifted both hands to beckon. "If you want it, you must come... " I saw a bird soaring out of a cave above the open sea. And there was something terrifying about the bird and the endless waves over which it flew. Higher and higher it went and the sky turned to silver and then gradually the silver faded and the sky went dark. The darkness of evening nothing to fear, really, nothing. Blessed darkness. But it was falling gradually and inexorably over nothing save this one tiny creature cawing in the wind above a great wasteland that was the world. Empty caves, empty sands, empty sea. All I had ever loved to look upon, or listen to, or felt with my hands was gone, or never existed, and the bird, circling and gliding, flew on and on, upwards past me, or more truly past no one, holding the entire landscape, without history or meaning, in the flat blackness of one tiny eye. I screamed but without a sound. I felt my mouth full of blood and each swallow passing down my throat and into fathomless thirst. And I wanted to say, yes, I understand now, I understand how terrible, how unbearable, this darkness. I didn't know. Couldn't know. The bird sailing on through the darkness over the barren shore, the seamless sea. Dear God, stop it. Worse than the horror in the inn. Worse than the helpless trumpeting of the fallen horse in the snow.
But the blood was the blood after all, and the heart-the luscious heart that was all hearts-was right there, on tiptoe against my lips. Now, my love, now's the moment. I can swallow the life that beats from your heart and send you into the oblivion in which nothing may ever be understood or forgiven, or I can bring you to me. I pushed him backwards. I held him to me like a crushed thing. But the vision wouldn't stop. His arms slipped around my neck, his face wet, eyes rolling up into his head. Then his tongue shot out. It licked hard at the gash I had made for him in my own throat. Yes, eager. But please stop this vision. Stop the upward flight and the great slant of the colorless landscape, the cawing that meant nothing over the howl of the wind. The pain is nothing compared to this darkness. I don't want to . . . I don't want to . . . But it was dissolving. Slowly dissolving. And finally it was finished. The veil of silence had come down, as it had with her. Silence. He was separate. And I was holding him away from me, and he was almost falling, his hands to his mouth, the blood running down his chin in rivulets. His mouth was open and a dry sound came out of it, in spite of the blood, a dry scream. And beyond him, and beyond the remembered vision of the metallic sea and the lone bird who was its only witness-I saw her in the doorway and her hair was a Virgin Mary veil of gold around her shoulders, and she said with the saddest expression on her face:
"Disaster, my son. " By midnight it was clear that he would not speak or answer to any voice, or move of his own volition. He remained still and expressionless in the places to which he was taken.
If the death pained him he gave no sign. If the new vision delighted him, he kept it to himself. Not even the thirst moved him. And it was Gabrielle who, after studying him quietly for hours, took him in hand, cleaning him and putting new clothes on him. Black wool she chose, one of the few somber coats I owned. And modest linen that made him look oddly like a young cleric, a little too serious, a little naive. And in the silence of the crypt as I watched them, I knew without doubt that they could hear each other's thoughts. Without a word she guided him through the grooming. Without a word she sent him back to the bench by the fire. Finally, she said, "He should hunt now, " and when she glanced at him, he rose without looking at her as if pulled by a string. Numbly I watched them going. Heard their feet on the stairs. And then I crept up after them, stealthily, and holding to the bars of the gate I watched them move, two feline spirits, across the field. The emptiness of the night was an indissoluble cold settling over me, closing me in. Not even the fire on the hearth warmed me when I returned to it. Emptiness here. And the quiet I had told myself that I wanted-just to be alone after the grisly struggle in Paris. Quiet, and the realization gnawing at my insides like a starved animal-that I couldn't stand the sight of him now.