"Leave Paris, yes, " he whispered. "But take me with you. I don't know how to exist here now. I stumble through a carnival of horrors. Please. . . " I heard myself say: "No. "
"Have I no value to you? " he asked. He turned to Gabrielle. Her face was anguished and still as she looked at him. I couldn't know what went on in her heart, and to my sadness, I realized that he was speaking to her and locking me out. What was her answer? But he was imploring both of us now. "Is there nothing outside yourself you would respect? "
"I might have destroyed you tonight, " I said. "It was respect which kept me from that. "
"No. " He shook his head in a startlingly human fashion. "That you never could have done. " I smiled. It was probably true. But we were destroying him quite completely in another way.
"Yes, " he said, "that's true. You are destroying me. Help me, " he whispered. "Give me but a few short years of all you have before you, the two of you. I beg you. That is all I ask. "
"No, " I said again. He was only a foot from me on the bench. He was looking at me. And there came the horrible spectacle again of his face narrowing and darkening and caving in upon itself in rage. It was as if he had no real substance. Only will kept him robust and beautiful. And when the flow of his will was interrupted, he melted like a wax doll. But, as before, he recovered himself almost instantly. The "hallucination " was past. He stood up and backed away from me until he was in front of the fire. The will coming from him was palpable. His eyes were like something that didn't belong to him, nor to anything on earth. And the fire blazing behind him made an eerie nimbus around his head.
"I curse you! " he whispered. I felt a jet of fear.
"I curse you, " he said again and came closer. "Love mortals then, and live as you have lived, recklessly, with appetite for everything and love for everything, but there will come a time when only the love of your own kind can save you. " He glanced at Gabrielle. "And I don't mean children such as this! " This was so strong that I couldn't conceal its effect on me, and I realized I was rising from the bench and slipping away from him towards Gabrielle.
"I don't come empty-handed to you, " he pressed, his voice deliberately softening. "I don't come begging with nothing to give of my own. Look at me. Tell me you don't need what you see in me, one who has the strength to take you through the ordeals that lie ahead. " His, eyes flashed on Gabrielle and for one moment he remained locked to her and I saw her harden and begin to tremble.
"Let her be! " I said.
"You don't know what I say to her, " he said coldly. "I do not try to hurt her. But in your love of mortals, what have you already done? " He would say something terrible if I didn't stop him, something to wound me or Gabrielle. He knew all that had happened with Nicki. I knew that he did. If, somewhere deep down in my soul, I wished for the end of Nicki, he would know that too! Why had I let him in? Why had I not known what he could do?
"Oh, but it's always a travesty, don't you see? " he said with that same gentleness. "Each time the death and the awakening will ravage the mortal spirit, so that one will hate you for taking his life, another will run to excesses that you scorn. A third will emerge mad and raving, another a monster you cannot control. One will be jealous of your superiority, another shut you out. " And here he shot his glance to Gabrielle again and half smiled. "And the veil will always come down between you. Make a legion. You will be, always and forever, alone! "
"I don't want to hear this. It means nothing, " I said. Gabrielle's face had undergone some ugly change. She was staring at him with hatred now, I was sure of it. He made that bitter little noise that is a laugh but isn't a laugh at all.
"Lovers with a human face, " he mocked me. "Don't you see your error? The other one hates you beyond all reason, and she-why, the dark blood has made her even colder, has it not? But even for her, strong as she is, there will come moments when she fears to be immortal, and who will she blame for what was done to her? "
"You are a fool, " Gabrielle whispered.
"You tried to protect the violinist from it. But you never sought to protect her. "
"Don't say any more, " I answered. "You make me hate you. Is that what you want? "
"But I speak the truth and you know it. And what you will never know, either of you, is the full depth of each other's hatreds and resentments. Or suffering. Or love. " He paused and I could say nothing. He was doing exactly what I feared he would, and I didn't know how to defend myself.
"If you leave me now with this one, " he continued, "you will do it again. Nicolas you never possessed. And she already wonders how she will ever get free of you. And unlike her, you cannot stand to be alone. " I couldn't answer. Gabrielle's eyes became smaller, her mouth a little more cruel.
"So the time will come when you will seek other mortals, " he went on, "hoping once more that the Dark trick will bring you the love you crave. And of these newly mutilated and unpredictable children you'll try to fashion your citadels against time. Well, they will be prisons if they last for half a century. I warn you. It is only with those as powerful and wise as yourself that the true citadel against time can be built. " The citadel against time. Even in my ignorance the words had their power. And the fear in me expanded, reached out to compass a thousand other causes. He seemed distant for a moment, indescribably beautiful in the firelight, the dark auburn strands of his hair barely touching his smooth forehead, his lips parted in a beatific smile.
"If we cannot have the old ways, can't we have each other? " he asked, and now his voice was the voice of the summons again. "Who else can understand your suffering? Who else knows what passed through your mind the night you stood on the stage of your little theater and you frightened all those you had loved? "
"Don't speak about that, " I whispered. But I was softening all over, drifting into his eyes and his voice. Very near to me was the ecstasy I'd felt that night on the battlements. With all my will I reached out for Gabrielle.
"Who understands what passed through your mind when my renegade followers, reveling in the music of your precious fiddler, devised their ghastly boulevard enterprise? " he asked. I didn't speak.
"The Theater of the Vampires! " His lips lengthened in the saddest smile. "Does she comprehend the irony of it, the cruelty? Does she know what it was like when you stood on that stage as a young man and you heard the audience screaming for you? When time was your friend, not your enemy as it is now? When in the wings, you put out your arms and your mortal darlings came to you, your little family, folding themselves against you. . . "
"Stop, please. I ask you to stop. "
"Does anyone else know the size of your soul? " Witchcraft. Had it ever been used with more skill? And what was he really saying to us beneath this liquid flow of beautiful language: Come to me, and I shall be the sun round which you are locked in orbit, and my rays shall lay bare the secrets you keep from each other, and I, who possess charms and powers of which you have no inkling, shall control and possess and destroy you!
"I asked you before, " I said. "What do you want? Really want? "
"You! " he said. "You and her! That we become three at this crossroads! " Not that we surrender to you? I shook my head. And I saw the same wariness and recoiling in Gabrielle. He was not angry; there was no malice now. Yet he said again, in the same beguiling voice:
"I curse you, " and I felt it as if he'd declaimed it.
"I offered myself to you at the moment you vanquished me, " he said. "Remember that when your dark children strike out at you, when they rise up against you. Remember me. " I was shaken, more shaken even than I had been in the sad and awful finish with Nicolas at Renaud's. I had never once known fear in the crypt under les Innocents. But I had known it in this room since we came in. And some anger boiled in him again, something too dreadful for him to control. I watched him bow his head and turn away. He became small, light, and held his arms close to himself as he stood before the blaze and he thought of threats now to hurt me, and I heard them though they died before they ever reached his lips. But something disturbed my vision for a fraction of a second. Maybe it was a candle guttering. Maybe it was the blink of my eye. Whatever it was, he vanished. Or he tried to vanish, and I saw him leaping away from the fire in a great dark streak.