24
Lestat
He Who Cuts the Knot
I TRIED TO PENETRATE the creature’s mind, trying to pick up the faintest image from it that might indicate precisely where Viktor was, and where Mekare was. And I knew surely that every other blood drinker at the table was doing this. Nothing. And whether the Voice was inside this being right now, looking through his eyes at me and at all of us, I couldn’t know.
“I can explain to you simply enough,” said Rhoshamandes, “what I want. The Voice wishes to come into me. I am loath to attempt this on my own. I feel I need the assistance of others here, most particularly Fareed, this vampire doctor. I need his help.”
Fareed said nothing.
“If we agree to proceed, I’ll take Fareed with me now, and when the deed is done, when Mekare is mercifully freed from this Earth, and the Voice is in me, I will return Fareed and Viktor unharmed. I will then possess the Sacred Core. And I will become the leader, so to speak, of this tribe.” He smiled coldly as he looked at Benji. “I assure you, I’m neither despotic nor obsessively interested in the conduct of blood drinkers. Like many a being who rises to power, I rise not because I want power, but because I don’t intend to be governed by anyone else.”
He was about to go on when Seth gestured for his attention. “Have you no hesitation,” he said, “about living with this Voice inside you night after night for the rest of your immortal journey in this world?”
Rhoshamandes didn’t immediately answer. Indeed his face went blank and became a bit rigid, a bit grim. He stared at the shiny little mobile phone in front of him and then he looked again at me and then at Seth.
“I am committed now to doing what the Voice wants,” he said. “The Voice wants to be freed from Mekare. The Voice can only temporarily possess any one of us at any given time, and the Voice does not see clearly or hear clearly through us when it possesses us. And in Mekare it is trapped in an instrument so damaged and blunted, so destroyed through isolation and privation, that it cannot hear or see at all.”
“Yes,” said Fareed quietly. “We all know this. We’re well aware of what the Voice is experiencing now. But Seth’s question was for you. How are you going to survive with the Voice inside you, night after—?”
“Yes, well, I will!” came the answer, emphatically and impatiently. Rhoshamandes flushed. “Do you think I have a choice?” he said. Then he drew back gesturing for silence. The Voice was talking to him, no doubt.
I was trying to conceal my thoughts completely, which meant leaving them in an inchoate state as best as I could, but clearly this creature was miserable, I could see it, miserable and conflicted, and his pale eyes, fixing on me again, couldn’t express anything but a deep frustration that bordered on pain.
“This must be followed to the finish,” he said now. “Fareed, I must ask you to come with me.”
“And what happens,” asked Sevraine suddenly, “when the Voice tires of being in your body, Rhoshamandes, and decides it wants to be transferred to another?”
“Well, very likely that is never going to happen!” Rhoshamandes flashed furiously, “because the Voice has things to learn in my body, a world to see as he’s never seen it before. This thing, this, this Voice …” He was stammering now in frustration. “This Voice has only just come to consciousness.”
“Yes, and it wants a better host body,” said Seth in a strong cold tone. “And it’s chosen you, a splendid male specimen, but once you take it into yourself you do realize it might just drive you stark raving mad.”
“We’re wasting time,” said Rhoshamandes. “Don’t you understand?”
“What? That you’re a pawn or a slave of this thing?” Seth was facing him and I couldn’t see his face except in semiprofile, but his tone was withering as before.
Rhoshamandes sat back in the chair and put up his hands. He stared at the phone again.
Suddenly Benji slid out of his place at my right and silently hurried down the length of the table until he stood at Rhoshamandes’s left and then he stared down at the phone.
“You touch it, and the boy dies!” said Rhoshamandes. He was now full of rage. His eyes were blazing as he glared at Benji, and his mouth was contorted, his lips pressed together and then released in a vicious sneer. “As I said, one errant signal from that phone and Benedict kills Viktor—.”
“And when that happens,” said Sevraine, “we destroy you, don’t we, in the most painful way because you no longer have any bargaining power whatsoever. What makes you think you can get what you want here?”
“I warn you!” He put up his right hand. Right, I was noticing. He’d taken out the phone with his right hand. Right-handed. “This will happen as the Voice has decreed.”
Marius cleared his throat and sat forward, hands clasped on the table. “The Voice is young to govern this tribe. And I think if you have the Sacred Core within you, you will expose yourself to the sun—and more of the younger generations of us will perish, because that’s what the Voice wants.”
“What of it!” demanded Rhoshamandes.
“What of it?” asked Marius. “All of us here have younger fledglings whom we love! You think I want to sit idly by while you destroy Armand, or Bianca?” He was allowing his own rage to rise. “You think I want to see Benji and Sybelle die?”
“Doesn’t matter what you want,” said Rhosh. “Do you realize that if you don’t respond to this offer within the next few minutes, if I fail to contact Benedict, he’ll kill the boy as directed, and I’ll withdraw from you—and make no mistake, I will do that so swiftly you’ll never catch me, and we will simply have to go over all this again, and again, and again, until the Voice achieves his purpose?”
“That sounds rather cynical to me,” said Marius.
“And to me also,” said Gregory. This was the first time he’d spoken.
“Don’t you realize what you’re dealing with!” Rhoshamandes glared at Gregory. “Nebamun,” he said, appealing to him by his ancient name. “The Voice hears every word we’re saying here. The Voice is here with us. The Voice can direct Benedict to kill the boy—.”
“Ah, but will Benedict do this for the Voice,” asked Gregory, “without a word from you?”
“I think not,” said Allesandra. “I think your gentle Benedict is a poor choice of ally in this.”
“Don’t be such a fool!” said Rhoshamandes. He was desperate. “You don’t know where Mekare is.”
“Small matter, that,” said Marius, “since she’s safe wherever she is for the moment since you cannot take the Sacred Core from her without help.”
“Oh, yes, I can and I will.” He stood up. “I can leave here and kill that mortal boy and work the transfer just as it was worked before. Why, I might very well compel Viktor to assist me.”
I started to laugh. I couldn’t stop myself. I laughed. I just broke down laughing and then bending forward, my left hand on my waist as I laughed, I shot the Mind Gift at the iPhone and brought it right to me at my end of the table.
“Don’t you dare touch it!” Rhoshamandes roared. I knew the volume of his voice was hurting Rose, had to be hurting her, and could be heard out there on the street by any of the young who might be lingering about.
I laughed harder. I just couldn’t stop it. I really didn’t want to be laughing like this, but I couldn’t stop.
I snatched up the phone and shoved it in my pocket, and using the seat of the chair beside me as a step, I mounted the table, and laughing uncontrollably I started to walk down the length of it towards him.
“Oh, Voice,” I said through fits of laughter. “You are such a precocious child! However did you think this stupid plan would work!”
The Voice came into my head in a fury. “I’ll destroy your son!” he cried. “You will not block me in this.”
“Yes, yes,” I said, laughing, taking one stride after another on the gilded blocks of the table. “I know. I have heard your threats before, haven’t I? Don’t you realize that I am the only one here who actually loves you?”
I had reached the end and suddenly sat down on the edge of the table to one side of Rhoshamandes, who was glaring at me now in fury.
I snatched my ax from inside my coat with my right hand, as with my left I grabbed Rhoshamandes’s left forearm, and I brought the ax down with a loud crash on his left wrist. In a tenth of a second it was done. The crescent blade flashed beautifully in the light.
The severed hand flew across the table. Rhoshamandes screamed in terror. Others around the table were gasping audibly, and shifting in their chairs.
Rhoshamandes stared at the hand, the blood pouring from his wrist, and tried to jerk himself free from me.
But just as I’d hoped, he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t move.
Marius and Seth and Sevraine and Gregory had all risen and were staring at him, pinning him there obviously with the Mind Gift as I knew they would.
The blood continued spurting out of his left arm, gushing on the table.
He tried to stifle another scream but he couldn’t.
“Is there any place,” I asked, “where we might burn that hand? I mean I can incinerate it here easily enough but I don’t want to scorch the table.”
“No!” he bellowed. He went mad trying to free himself from me, squirming, struggling against my hand and the invisible force that held him. I could see the preternatural flesh healing the breach at his wrist.
“You call that stupid little sorcerer’s apprentice of yours now,” I said, “and you tell him to free my son, or I’ll hack you up piece by piece. And I’ll burn each piece in front of you.” I leaned down and looked into his eyes. “Don’t think about trying to loose that fatal fire on me,” I said. “Or they’ll burn you black and dead at once.”
He was frozen in rage and panic. Unfortunate for him.
I yanked his arm out and swung the ax again right below his shoulder, slicing the arm free.
The screams that erupted from him shook the chandeliers. He stared down at the stump.
I flung the arm down the length of the table to the middle. At once several of the others pushed away from it, with the scrape of their chairs on the boards, and shrank back.
He stared at his arm, unable to stop the screams ripping from him until he clamped his right hand over his mouth. A long ghastly moan came from him.
More of the others had risen and were backing away from the table, a reaction that didn’t surprise me.
Seeing someone dismembered is difficult even for vampires of supreme detachment and self-control—even when they know that the limbs can be reattached and thrive again. And of course, speaking of burning the limbs, well … that would take care of any future reattachment, wouldn’t it?
“We need a brazier with coals,” I said. “Or should we simply incinerate these fragments with the Fire Gift?” I glanced at the others, then back at Rhoshamandes “I’d tell the Voice to go to Hell, if I were you, and I’d call Benedict now and tell him to release my son.”
I drew the phone out of my pocket.
“Benji, put the little thing on speaker, will you?” I slapped it down on the table.
Benji did as I had asked.
“I see your arm is already healing, friend,” I said. “Maybe I should chop off both your legs at the same time.”
With the greatest restraint, Rhoshamandes held back his sobs. I saw pure agony in his eyes as he looked at me, and then back at the severed arm and hand.
“I will command Benedict to kill the boy,” said the Voice, filled with panic and rage as surely as Rhoshamandes was. “I will tell him now.”
“No, you won’t, Voice,” I said under my breath. I looked down as I spoke to make it clear to everyone present that I was talking to the enemy himself. “Because if Benedict were like to do it, it would be done. He won’t do any such thing until he knows his maker’s safe. I’ll wager his loyalty to his maker is a Hell of a lot stronger than his loyalty to you.”
I turned to Rhoshamandes. “Now make us hear your fledgling Benedict talking through that phone now, clearly and distinctly, or I will chop off both your legs and split your breastbone with this ax.”
Rhoshamandes put his right hand to his mouth now as if he were about to be sick. His face was blanched, and covered in a thin film of blood sweat. He was trembling violently. He reached for the phone and lifted it and struggled apparently to make his trembling fingers and thumb obey him.
He dropped the phone back onto the table, or it slipped out of his blood-tinged sweating hand.
All waited.
A voice came out of the phone, the voice of a blood drinker.
“Rhosh? Rhosh, I need you. Rhosh, everything has gone wrong!”
The Voice cursed me in French. Then in English. I was an abomination to it. Did I know that? I was anathema. I was all things foul and worthy of damnation.
“Benedict,” I said coolly, “if you don’t release my son unharmed, I’m going to chop your maker into pieces, do you understand? I’ve already chopped off his right hand and his arm. I’m going for his nose next, then his ears. And I’ll burn these parts before I go for his legs. Do you want me to send you pictures of this?”
Indeed Benji was already snapping pictures with his own phone. The number from which Benedict was talking was plainly readable on Rhoshamandes’s phone.
Benedict began weeping.
“But I can’t,” he said. “Please don’t hurt him. I can’t. I mean I … I mean Viktor’s free. He’s free. Rhosh, let me speak to Rhosh, Rhosh, I need your help, Rhosh help me. She’s come alive. She’s woken up. She’s broken out of her bonds. Rhosh, she’s going to destroy me. Viktor’s free. Viktor has run away. Rhosh, everything went wrong.”
Rhosh sat back in the chair and looked at the dark glass ceiling. A long shudder passed through his body. The stump below his shoulder had sealed itself off and he was no longer bleeding.
“Oh, Benedict,” he said with a long groan.
“Tell us exactly where you are!” said Benji. “Tell us now. You force me to trace this phone of yours, and I swear to you, Lestat will split this creature’s tongue.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The Voice had fallen into a nest of sighs, gasps, malicious whispers, and growls.
“You’ve got to come!” said Benedict. “She’s after me. She’s walking along the beach.”
“Take to the air,” said Rhoshamandes in a low groaning voice. “She doesn’t know she has that gift.”
“But I did,” Benedict stammered. “I’m up here safe on this bluff, but Rhosh, if I leave here and if she wanders off, if I lose sight of her, if we lose her, Rhosh, help me. If she falls down somewhere in the sun, if the sun strikes her, if we lose her …”
“You’ll die,” I said. “Where are you? Tell us now!”
“Montauk, the Atlantic coast, the tip of Long Island. Old Montauk Road. For God’s sake, come.”
At once Fareed and Seth made for the door.
“I want to come with you!” I shouted.
“No, stay here, please, and keep him here!” said Seth, with a nod to Sevraine and to Gregory. “Trust us to bring them back.” He looked down at the phone. “Benedict, you harm that boy and we will kill you when we find you. And your maker will die here. You’ll never see him again.”
“I won’t hurt him,” Benedict said. “He’s fine. I never wanted to hurt him. He’s unharmed. He’s walking inland towards the road. I didn’t hurt him at all.”
“I want to go with you,” said Jesse, rising from her chair. David was right with her. “If anyone can calm Mekare, I can. Otherwise you might not be able to take her to safety. Let me come.”
“Let us both come,” said David.
“Of course, go,” I said. “All of you, go.”
Seth nodded, and they all left together.
The Voice was cursing me in some ancient language, promising to destroy me, promising me the most terrible reckoning, and I sat there at the end of the table, one knee up, the other leg dangling over the edge, the ax still in my right hand, and contemplated whether or not I wanted to go on chopping up this creature—well, just a little so that Benedict might hear him scream. I couldn’t quite make up my mind.
And I could not stop thinking, This is the monster who murdered Maharet, the great Maharet who had never done him a particle of harm. This is the monster who attacked her as brutally as I am attacking him now.
I could hear Sybelle crying. I could hear a female voice, I think Bianca’s voice, trying to quiet her. But she couldn’t stop crying.
All the fight had gone out of Rhoshamandes. Sevraine was staring at him, fixedly, and so was Gregory—both clearly holding him there through their power. But I wondered if it was even necessary now.
He was defeated, staring dully at the table before him, but he was no longer trembling, no longer sweating, and then that expression came over him again, that same look of cavalier dismissal, almost a facial shrug, and he seemed to collapse mentally into himself.
“This is not the finish,” the Voice snarled at me. “This is only the beginning. I will drive you out of your mind before this is finished. You will beg me to leave you alone, on your knees. You think this is finished? Never.”
I turned him off. Just like that. Turned him off. But it didn’t last. He blasted through within a split second. It was as they had said. He was stronger. “I will make your existence miserable from now on and forever until I accomplish my purpose and then I will do to you all that you have done to him, and to me.”
Allesandra walked slowly towards us and round in back of Rhoshamandes. She stood behind Rhoshamandes’s chair and put her hands very lightly on his shoulders.
“Don’t hurt him anymore, please,” she said, appealing to me. “You have cut the Gordian knot, Lestat. Splendid. It is all splendid. But the Voice tricked him. The Voice duped him, as it duped me.”
The Voice said, “You think you can shut me out! You think it’s so easy? You think it’s easy now that I’m stronger? You think you can do it now that I’ve recovered so much strength?”
“Voice,” I said with a sigh. “Maybe we both have much to learn.”
He began to weep. It was as loud and clear in my head as if he was in the very room. Again, I tried to shut him out. Again, I could not.
I opened my coat, wiped the blood off my ax on the lining of it, such pretty brown silk lining, and then I hooked the handle back in there under my arm.
“Give me back my arm and my hand, please,” said Rhoshamandes.
“I will when my son is restored to me,” I said.
To my astonishment, the sound of weeping came from the phone.
The Voice was quiet, but I could hear a low hiss that told me he was still here.
“Rhosh, are you there?” Benedict asked in a ragged aching tone.
“Yes, Benedict, I am. Are you watching her?”
“She’s just walking along the sand. She sees me. She knows where I am. She’s moving slowly towards me. Rhosh, this is horrible. Rhosh, talk to me.”
“I’m listening, Benedict,” said Rhosh wearily.
“She knows I’m the one who struck the fatal blow,” Benedict cried. “Rhosh, it’s all my fault. I kept thinking about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, because I got this flash from her when I was binding her up. This flash, that she was with her sister, and her sister Maharet was alive and sitting beside her there and staring at me, and that’s what I saw from her mind. And after you left, Rhosh, there was another one of those flashes from her, of the two of them together, and I knew she was awake down there, and I didn’t know what to do, and then Viktor, Viktor set the house on fire.”
We sat listening to this, all of us, without a word. Even the Voice was listening, I was sure of it. In the far corner, my beloved Rose was sitting against the wall, her knees drawn up, her fingers splayed in front of her eyes.
“He lit a fire in there, Rhosh. There were all these scented candles, matches, I didn’t think, I never thought. He set a bundle of towels on fire in the shower stall. He set a towel on fire under the door, the wooden door.…”
“I understand Benedict,” Rhosh said with a long sigh. His eyes were wearily fastened on his severed arm and hand.
“I went up there to put the fire out, and to try to make him stop it, to make him be patient. I told him no one was really going to hurt him! And then I heard sounds from the cellar. She was coming. I knew it. She was coming after me. I was talking to Viktor and she was there, Rhosh, in the door. I was terrified, Rhosh. Terrified and I couldn’t get that image out of my head of bringing that blade down to kill Maharet. She knew. She saw it. She knew. And I thought, She’s going to destroy me now, crush me with those white hands. But she just moved right past me and she went up to Viktor. She went to Viktor and, Rhosh, she started stroking his face and kissing him. And I ran.”
He broke down in sobs.
Rhosh raised his eyebrows in the most bitter ironical expression, and perhaps this was far more indicative of his true heart than that cavalier dismissive expression that kept competing with it as he continued to look at his severed parts.
“I have to go now,” said Benedict miserably. “They’re down there on the beach with her. They have Viktor. But where should I go?”
“Come here,” I said, “and collect your maker because as soon as my son is safe in my arms, I’ll give him back what I’ve taken from him.” I promised nothing else.
I stood up and turned and faced the others. I wondered how many of them wanted me to be their leader now. Well, I had given them a gruesome taste of what I was capable of, acts that were far more difficult to perform for anyone with a drop of humanity in him than simply blasting others away with invisible force or exterminating heat. I’d given them a really good taste of what sort of ruler I might be.
I expected a certain amount of contempt with an equal measure, I hoped, of grudging sympathy, but I saw nothing but simple expressions, eyes fixed on me as agreeably and even generously as ever. True, Sybelle was crying and Bianca was trying to comfort her, but I sensed no hostility from any of them.
Flavius was actually smiling at me. And Zenobia and Avicus were entirely calm. Pandora seemed lost in her own thoughts, and Arjun merely gazed at me with obvious admiration.
Gregory had a subtle smile on his face. And Armand’s expression was very nearly the same. There was even the faintest smile on Louis’s face, and that amazed me, though there was some other element in it, which I couldn’t define. Notker was gazing at me with an open, affable expression, and Sevraine was looking coldly at Rhoshamandes without the slightest apparent emotion, while Eleni was looking up with frank admiration and Eugénie merely watched without obvious concern.
Armand stood up, his eyes as innocent and submissive as they always appeared.
“They’ll be coming into the back garden,” he said. “Let me show you the way.”
“I think you should destroy this one,” said Benji with a serious frown as he looked at Rhoshamandes. “He cares nothing about any of us. He cares only for his Benedict and himself.”
Rhoshamandes showed no sign that this surprised him or even that he’d heard.
“Lestat,” said Benji. “You are our prince now. Destroy him.”
“He was tricked,” said Allesandra again softly.
“They killed the great Maharet,” said Notker under his breath. He gave a little shrug, one eyebrow raised eloquently. “They killed her. They took counsel from no one. They should have come to you, to the others here, to us.”
“Except the Voice bewitched them,” said Allesandra, “and the Voice lies and the Voice is treacherous.”
I could hear the Voice snickering and murmuring and then he cried out, startling me, positively screaming in my head, exploding all rational thought, but I quickly regained my poise. “Destroy him,” said the Voice. “He bungled everything.”
I almost laughed out loud, but pressed my lips together in a bitter smile.
But Rhoshamandes knew what the Voice had just said to me. Rhoshamandes had picked it up from my mind.
He looked at me, but nothing changed in his calm face, and then slowly he looked away.
“I gave my word,” I said to Benji. “When Viktor comes, we’ll give him back these fragments. I can’t break my word.”
I went round the table and towards Rose.
She lay pale and shuddering against the satin pillows. I collected her in my arms and carried her out of the ballroom behind Armand.