Laughter from the boy behind him. The tink of a tambourine, the thin sound of the other woman singing. A long streak of the man's laughter-like a ribbon unfurling, charting his movement as he rushed around in a circle through the rattling scrims. Nicki drew in so that the light behind him vanished. I couldn't see Eleni.
"Magnificent evil! " he said. He was full of menace and his white hands looked like the claws of a sea creature that could at any given moment move to tear me to bits. "To serve the god of the dark wood as he has not been served ever and here in the very center of civilization. And for this you saved the theater. Out off your gallant patronage this sublime offering is born. "
"It is petty! " I said. "It is merely beautiful and clever and nothing more. " My voice had not been very loud but it brought him to silence, and it brought the others to silence. And the shock in me melted slowly into another emotion, no less painful, merely easier to contain. Nothing but the sounds again from the boulevard. A glowering anger flowed out of him, his pupils dancing as he looked at me.
"You're a liar, a contemptible liar, " he said.
"There is no splendor in it, " I answered. "There is nothing sublime. Fooling helpless mortals, mocking them, and then going out from here at night to take life in the same old petty manner, one death after another in all its inevitable cruelty and shabbiness so that we can live. And man can kill another man! Play your violin forever. Dance as you wish. Give them their money's worth if it keeps you busy and eats up eternity! It's simply clever and beautiful. A grove in the Savage Garden. Nothing more. "
"Vile liar! " he said between his teeth. "You are God's fool, that's what you are. You who possessed the dark secret that soared above everything, rendered everything meaningless, and what did you do with it, in those months when you ruled alone from Magnus's tower, but try to live like a good man! A good man! " He was close enough to kiss me, the blood of his spittle hitting my face.
"Patron of the arts, " he sneered. "Giver of gifts to your family, giver of gifts to us! " He stepped back, looking down on me contemptuously.
"Well, we will take the little theater that you painted in gold, and hung with velvet, " he said,
"and it will serve the forces of the devil more splendidly than he was ever served by the old coven. " He turned and glanced at Eleni. He glanced back at the others. "We will make a mockery of all things sacred. We will lead them to ever greater vulgarity and profanity. We will astonish. We will beguile. But above all, we will thrive on their gold as well as their blood and in their midst we will grow strong. " "Yes, " said the boy behind him. "We will become invincible. " His face had a crazed look, the look of the zealot as he gazed at Nicolas. "We will have names and places in their very world. "
"And power over them, " said the other woman, "and a vantage point from which to study them and know them and perfect our methods of destroying them when we choose. "
"I want the theater, " Nicolas said to me. "I want it from you. The deed, the money to reopen it. My assistants here are ready to listen to me. "
"You may have it, if you wish, " I answered. "It is yours if it will take you and your malice and your fractured reason off my hands. " I got up off the dressing table and went towards him and I think that he meant to block my path, but something unaccountable happened. When I saw he wouldn't move, my anger rose up and out of me like an invisible fist. And I saw him moved backwards as if the fist had struck him. And he hit the wail with sudden force. I could have been free of the place in an instant. I knew Gabrielle was only waiting to follow me. But I didn't leave. I stopped and looked back at him, and he was still against the wall as if he couldn't move. And he was watching me and the hatred was as pure, as undiluted by remembered love, as it had been all along. But I wanted to understand, I wanted really to know what had happened. And I came towards him again in silence and this time it was I who was menacing, and my hands looked like claws and I could feel his fear. They were all, except for Eleni, full of fear. I stopped when I was very close to him and he looked directly at me, and it was as if he knew exactly what I was asking him.
"All a misunderstanding, my love, " he said. Acid on the tongue.
The blood sweat had broken out again, and his eyes glistened as if they were wet. "It was to hurt others, don't you see, the violin playing, to anger them, to secure for me an island where they could not rule.
They would watch my ruin, unable to do anything about it. " I didn't answer. I wanted him to go on.
"And when we decided to go to Paris, I thought we would starve in Paris, that we would go down and down and down. It was what I wanted, rather than what they wanted, that I, the favored son, should rise for them. I thought we would go down! We were supposed to go down. "
"Oh, Nicki... " I whispered.
"But you didn't go down, Lestat, " he said, his eyebrows rising. "The hunger, the cold-none of it stopped you. You were a triumph! " The rage thickened his voice again. "You didn't drink yourself to death in the gutter. You turned everything upside down! And for every aspect of our proposed damnation you found exuberance, and there was no end to your enthusiasm and the passion coming out of you-and the light, always the light. And in exact proportion to the light coming out of you, there was the darkness in me! Every exuberance piercing me and creating its exact proportion of darkness and despair! And then, the magic, when you got the magic, irony of ironies, you protected me from it! And what did you do with it but use your Satanic powers to simulate the actions of a good man! " I turned around. I saw them scattered in the shadows, and farthest away, the figure of Gabrielle. I saw the light on her hand as she raised it, beckoning for me to come away. Nicki reached up and touched my shoulders. I could feel the hatred coming through his touch. Loathsome to be touched in hate.
"Like a mindless beam of sunlight you routed the bats of the old coven! " he whispered. "And for what purpose? What does it mean, the murdering monster who is filled with light! " I turned and smacked him and sent him hurtling into the dressing room, his right hand smashing the mirror, his head cracking against the far wall. For one moment he lay like something broken against the mass of old clothing, and then his eyes gathered their determination again, and his face softened into a slow smile. He righted himself and slowly, as an indignant mortal might, he smoothed his coat and his rumpled hair.
It was like my gestures under les Innocents when my captors had sent me down in the dirt. And he came forward with the same dignity, and the smile was as ugly as any I had ever seen.
"I despise you, " he said. "But I am done with you. I have the power from you and I know how to use it, which you do not. I am in a realm at last where I choose to triumph! In darkness, we're equal now. And you will give me the theater, that because you owe it to me, and you are a giver of things, aren't you-a giver of gold coins to hungry children-and then I won't ever look upon your light again. " He stepped around me and stretched out his arms to the others:
"Come, my beauties, come, we have plays to write, business to attend to. You have things to learn from me. I know what mortals really are. We must get down to the serious invention of our dark and splendid art. We will make a coven to rival all covens. We will do what has never been done. " The others looked at me, frightened, hesitant. And in this still and tense moment I heard myself take a deep breath. My vision broadened. I saw the wings around us again, the high rafters,