Blood Canticle (The Vampire Chronicles #10) 1

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BLACKWOOD FARM: EXTERIOR ;EVENING .

A LITTLE COUNTRY CEMETERY on the edge of a cypress swamp, with a dozen or more old cement graves, most names long ago effaced, and one of these raised rectangular tombs black with soot from a recent fire, and the whole surrounded by a small iron fence and four immense oak trees, the kind weighted down by their dipping branches, and the sky the perfect color of lilacs, and the heat of the summer sweet and caressing and-

-you bet I've got on my black velvet frock coat (close-up: tapered at the waist, brass buttons) and my motorcycle boots, and a brand-new linen shirt loaded with lace at cuffs and throat (pity the poor slob who snickers at me on account of that!), and I haven't cut my shoulder-length blond mane tonight, which I sometimes do for variety, and I've chucked my violet glasses because who cares that my eyes attract

attention, and my skin's still dramatically tanned from my years-ago suicide attempt in the raw sun of the Gobi Desert, and I'm thinking-

-Dark Trick, yes, work the miracle, they need you, up there in the Big House, you Brat Prince, you Sheik among vampires, stop brooding and mourning down here, go to it, there's a delicate situation up there in the Big House-and it is

TIME TO TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED AND SO I DO:

I PACED , having just risen from my secret hiding place, and I mourned bitterly for another Blood Drinker who had perished in this very cemetery, on the aforementioned blackened grave, in an immense fire, and of her own will, leaving us only last night, without the slightest warning.

This was Merrick Mayfair, only three years among the Undead or less, and I'd invited her here to Blackwood Farm to help me exorcise an evil spirit that had been haunting Quinn Blackwood since childhood. Quinn was very new to the Blood, and had come to me for help with this ghost, which, far from leaving him at his transformation from mortal to vampire, had only grown stronger and meaner, and had actually caused the death of the mortal dearest to Quinn-his great Aunt Queen, age of eighty-five, by causing the beautiful lady to fall. I had needed Merrick Mayfair to exorcise this evil spirit forever.

Goblin was the name of this ghost, and as Merrick Mayfair had been both scholar and sorceress before she sought out the Dark Blood, I figured she would have the strength required to get rid of him.

Well, she came, and she solved the riddle of Goblin, and, building a high altar of coal and wood which she set ablaze, she not only burnt the corpse of the evil one but went into the flames with it. The spirit was gone, and so was Merrick Mayfair.

Of course I tried to snatch her back from the fire, but her soul had taken flight, and no amount of my blood poured on her burnt remains could conceivably revive her.

It did seem to me as I walked back and forth, kicking at the graveyard dust, that immortals who think they want the Dark Blood perish infinitely more easily than those of us who never asked for it. Perhaps the anger of the rape carries us through for centuries.

But as I said: something was going on in the Big House.

I was thinking Dark Trick as I paced, yes, Dark Trick, the making of another vampire.

But why was I even considering such a thing? I, who secretly wants to be a saint? Surely the blood of Merrick Mayfair was not crying out from the Earth for another newborn, you can scrap that idea. And this was one of those nights when every breath I took felt like a minor metaphysical disaster.

I looked up at the Manor House as they call it, the mansion up on the rise, with its two-story white columns and many lighted windows, the place which had been the locus of my pain and fortune for the last few nights, and I tried to figure how to play this one-for the benefit of all involved.

First consideration: Blackwood Manor was buzzing with unsuspecting mortals, most dear to me on short acquaintance, and by unsus-pecting I mean they've never guessed that their beloved Quinn Black-wood, master of the house, or his mysterious new friend, Lestat, were vampires, and that was the way Quinn willed it with all his heart and soul-that no untoward evil thing would happen, because this was his home, and vampire though he was, he wasn't ready to break the ties.

Among these mortals were Jasmine, the versatile black housekeeper, a stunner when it comes to looks (more on that as we go along, I hope, because I can't resist), and Quinn's one-time lover; and their little son Jerome, begat by Quinn before he'd been made a vampire, of course, four years old and running up and down the circular steps just for fun, his feet in white tennis shoes a little too big for his body; and Big Ramona, Jasmine's grandmother, a regal black lady with white hair in a bun, shaking her head, talking to nobody, in the kitchen cooking up supper for God knows who; and her grandson Clem, a sinewy black man seemingly poured into his feline skin, attired in a black suit and tie, standing just inside the big front door looking up the steps, the chauffeur of the lady of the house just lately lost, Aunt Queen, for whom they were all still painfully mourning, highly suspicious of what was going on in Quinn's bedroom, and with reason.

Back the hall upstairs was Quinn's old tutor Nash Penfield, in his bedroom, seated with thirteen-year-old Tommy Blackwood, who was actually Quinn's uncle by natural blood but more purely an adopted son, and the two were talking in front of the cold summer fireplace, and Tommy, an impressive young man by anyone's standards, was crying softly over the death of the great lady, to whom I just referred, with whom Tommy had traveled all over Europe for three years, "the making of him," as Dickens might have said.

Hovering about the back of the property were the Shed Men, Allen and Joel, sitting in an open lighted portion of the shed, reading theWeekly World News and howling with laughter at it, while the television was blaring Football. There was a giant limousine in front of the house and one in the back.

As for the Big House, let me go into detail. I loved it. I found it perfectly proportioned, which wasn't always the case with American Greek Revival houses, but this one, preening on its terrace of land, was more than agreeable and inviting, with its long pecan-tree drive, and its regal windows all around.

Interior? What Americans call giant rooms. Dustless, manicured. Full of mantel clocks, mirrors, portraits and Persian rugs, and the inevitable m¨¦lange of nineteenth-century mahogany furniture that people mix with new reproductions of classic Hepplewhite and Louis XIV styles to achieve the look they call Traditional or antique. Eh? And all pervaded by the inevitable drone of massive air-conditioning, which not only cooled the air magically but provided the Privacy of Sound, which has so transformed the South in this day and age.

I know, I know. I should have described the scene before I described the people. So what? I wasn't thinking logically. I was pondering fiercely. I couldn't quite leave behind the fate of Merrick Mayfair.

Of course Quinn had claimed that he saw the Light of Heaven receiving both his unwanted ghost and Merrick, and for him the scene in this cemetery had been a theophany-something very different from what it was for me. All I saw was Merrick immolating herself. I had sobbed, screamed, cursed.

Okay, enough about Merrick. But keep her in mind, because she will definitely be referred to later. Who knows? Maybe I'll just bring her up anytime I feel like it. Who's in charge of this book anyway? No, don't take that seriously. I promised you a story, you'll get one.

The point is, or was, that on account of what was going on in the Big House right now, I didn't have time for all this moping. Merrick was lost to us. The vibrant and unforgettable Aunt Queen was lost. It was grief behind me and grief before me. But a huge surprise had just occurred, and my precious Quinn needed me without delay.

Of course nobody was making me take an interest in things here at Blackwood Farm.

I could have just cut out.

Quinn, the fledgling, had called on Lestat the Magnificent (yeah, I like that title) to help him get rid of Goblin, and technically, since Merrick had taken the ghost with her, I was finished here and could go riding off into the summer dusk with all the staff hereabouts saying, "Who was that dashing dude, anyway?" but I couldn't leave Quinn.

Quinn was in a real snare with these mortals. And I was greatly in love with Quinn. Quinn, aged twenty- two when Baptized in the Blood, was a seer of visions and a dreamer of dreams, unconsciously charming and unfailingly kind, a suffering hunter of the night who thrived only on the blood of the damned, and the company of the loving and the uplifting.

(The loving and the uplifting??? Like me, for instance??? So the kid makes mistakes. Besides, I was so in love with him that I put on a damned good show for him. And can I be damned for loving people who bring out the love in me? Is that so awful for a full-time monster? You will shortly come to understand that I am always talking about my moral evolution! But for now: the plot.)

I can "fall in love" with anybody-man, woman, child, vampire, the Pope. It doesn't matter. I'm the ultimate Christian. I see God's gifts in everyone. But almost anybody would love Quinn. Loving people like Quinn is easy.

Now, back to the question at hand: Which brings me back to Quinn's bedroom, where Quinn was at this delicate moment.

Before either of us had risen tonight-and I had taken the six-foot-four inches tall, blue-eyed black-haired boy to one of my secret hiding places with me-a mortal girl had arrived at the Manor House and affrighted everybody.

This was the matter that had Clem looking up the steps, and Big Ramona muttering, and Jasmine worried sick as she went about in her high-heel pumps, wringing her hands. And even little Jerome was excited about it, still dashing up and down the circular stairs. Even Tommy and Nash had broken off their mourning laments earlier to have a glance at this mortal girl and offer to help her in her distress.

It was easy enough for me to scan their minds and get a picture of it, this grand and bizarre event, and to scan Quinn's mind, for that matter, as to the result.

And I was making something of an assault on the mind of the mortal girl herself as she sat on Quinn's bed, in a huge random display of flowers, a truly marvelous heap of helter-skelter flowers, talking to Quinn.

It was a cacophony of minds filling me in on everything from the beginning. And the whole thing sent a little panic through my enormous brave soul. Work the Dark Trick? Make another one of us? Woe and Grief! Sorrow and Misery! Help, Murder, Police!

Do I really want to steal another soul out of the currents of human destiny? I who want to be a saint? And once personally hobnobbed with angels? I who claimed to have seen God Incarnate? Bring another into the-get ready!-Realm of the Undead?

Comment: One of the great things about loving Quinn was that I hadn't made him. The boy had come to me free of charge. I'd felt a little like Socrates must have felt with all those gorgeous Greek boys coming to him for advice, that is, until somebody showed up with the Burning Hemlock.

Back to now: If I had any rival in this world for Quinn's heart it was this mortal girl, and he was up there offering her in frantic whispers the promise of our Blood, the fractured gift of our immortality. Yes, this explicit offer was coming from the lips of Quinn. Good God, kid, show some backbone, I thought! You saw the Light of Heaven last night!

Mona Mayfair was this girl's name. But she'd never known or even heard of Merrick Mayfair. So cut that connection right now. Merrick was a quadroon, born among the "colored" Mayfairs who lived downtown, and Mona was a member of the white Mayfairs of the Garden District and Mona had probably never heard a word spoken of Merrick or her colored kin. As for Merrick, she'd shown no interest ever in the famous white family. She'd had a path all her own.

But Mona was a bona fide witch, however-sure as Merrick had been-and what is a witch? Well, it is a mind reader, magnet for spirits and ghosts and a possessor of other occult talents. And I'd heard enough of the illustrious Mayfair clan in the last few days from Quinn to know that Mona's cousins, witches all, if

I'm not mistaken, were undoubtedly in hot pursuit of Mona now, no doubt desperate with worry for the child.

In fact, I'd had a glimpse of three of this remarkable tribe (and one of them a witch priest, no less, a witch priest! I don't even want to think about it!), at the funeral Mass for Aunt Queen, and why they were taking so long to come after Mona was mystifying me, unless they were deliberately playing this one out slowly for reasons that will soon become clear.

We vampires don't like witches. Can you guess why? Any self-respecting vampire, even if he or she is three thousand years old, can fool mortals, at least for a while. And young ones like Quinn pass, no question. Jasmine, Nash, Big Ramona-they all accepted Quinn for human. Eccentric? Clinically insane? Yes, they believed all that about him. But they thought he was human. And Quinn could live among them for quite a while. And as I've already explained, they thought I was human too, though I probably couldn't count on that for too long.

Now, with witches it's another story. Witches detect all kinds of small things about other creatures. It has to do with the lazy and constant exercise of their power. I'd sensed that at the funeral Mass, just breathing the same air as Dr. Rowan Mayfair and her husband, Michael Curry, and Fr. Kevin Mayfair. But fortunately, they were distracted by a multitude of other stimuli, so I hadn't had to bolt.

So okay, where was I? Yeah, cool. Mona Mayfair was a witch, and one of supreme talent. And once the Dark Blood had come into Quinn about a year ago, he had forsworn ever seeing her again, dying though she was, for fear she might at once realize that evil had robbed him of life, and contaminate her he would not.

However, of her own free will and much to everyone's amazement:

She'd come about an hour ago, driving the family stretch limousine, which she'd hijacked from the driver outside the Mayfair Medical Center where she'd been dying for over two years. (He'd been walking the block, poor unlucky guy, smoking a cigarette, when she'd sped off, and the last image in her mind of him was of his running after her.)

She'd then gone to florist after florist where the Mayfair name was good as gold collecting giant sprays of flowers, or loose bouquets, whatever she could get immediately, and then she'd driven across the twin span as they call the long lake bridge and up to the Blackwood Manor House, stepping out of the car barefoot and wrapped in a gaping hospital gown, a perfect horror-a wobbling skeleton with bruised skin hanging on her bones and a mop of long red hair-and had commandeered Jasmine, Clem, Allen and Nash to take the flowers to Quinn's room, asserting that she had Quinn's permission to heap them all over the four-poster bed. It was a pact. Don't worry.

Scared as they all were, they did as they were told.

After all, everybody knew that Mona Mayfair had been the love of Quinn's life before Quinn's beloved Aunt Queen, world traveler and raconteur, had insisted Quinn go to Europe with her on her "very last trip," which had somehow stretched into three whole years, and Quinn had come home to discover Mona in isolation at Mayfair Medical quite beyond his reach.

Then the Dark Blood had come to Quinn in venality and violence, and another year passed with Mona behind hospital glass, too weak even for a scribbled note or a glance at Quinn's daily gift of flowers and-.

Now back to the anxious passel of attendants who rustled the flowers up to the room.

The emaciated girl herself, and we're talking about twenty years old, that's what I'm calling a girl, could not possibly make it up the circular staircase, so the gallant Nash Penfield, Quinn's old tutor, cast by God to be the perfect gentleman (and responsible for a great deal of Quinn's finishing polish), had carried her up and laid her in her "bower of flowers" as she'd called it, the child assuring him that the roses were thornless, and she had lain back on the four-poster twining broken phrases from Shakespeare with her own, to wit:

"Pray, let me to my bride bed, so bedecked, retire, and let them strew my grave hereafter."

At which point, thirteen-year-old Tommy had appeared in the doorway of the bedroom, and had been so upset by the sight of Mona, in his raw grief for lost Aunt Queen, that he'd begun to shake, and so the amazed Nash had taken him out while Big Ramona had stayed to declare in a stage whisper worthy of the Bard:

"That girl's dying!"

At which the little red-headed Ophelia laughed. What else? And asked for a can of cold diet soda.

Jasmine had thought the child was going to give up the ghost on the spot, which could easily have happened, but the child said No, she was waiting for Quinn, and asked everybody to leave, and when Jasmine had come running back with the cold soda in a bubbly glass with a bent straw, the girl would hardly drink it.

You can live all your life in America without ever seeing a mortal in this condition.

But in the eighteenth century when I was born it was rather common. People starved in the streets of Paris in those days. They died all around you. Same situation prevailed in nineteenth-century New Orleans when the starving Irish began to arrive. You could see many beggars of skin and bone. Now you have to go to "the foreign missions" or to certain hospital wards to see people suffering like Mona Mayfair.

Big Ramona had made a further declaration, that that was the very bed in which her own daughter died (Little Ida), and that it was no bed for a sick child. But Jasmine, her granddaughter, had told her to shush,

and Mona had taken to laughing so hard she was in agony and began to choke. She had survived.

As I stood in the cemetery, monitoring all these marvelous mirrors of near immediate events, I reckoned Mona was five-foot-one or thereabouts, destined to be delicate, and once a famous beauty, but the sickness-set into motion by a traumatic birth which was despite all my power still unclear to me-had so thoroughly done its work on her that she was under seventy pounds in weight and her profuse red hair only heightening the macabre spectacle of her total deterioration. She was so dangerously close to death that only will was keeping her going.

It had been will and witchcraft-the high persuasion of witches-that had helped her get the flowers and to force so much assistance when she arrived.

But now that Quinn had come, now that Quinn was there with her, and the one bold idea of her dying hours was consummate, the pain in her internal organs and her joints was defeating her. There was also a terrible pain in the entire surface of her skin. Merely sitting amid all the precious flowers hurt her.

As for my brave Quinn renouncing every execration he had laid on his fate and offering her the Dark Blood, no big surprise, I had to admit, but I wished to Hell he hadn't.

It's hard to watch anyone die when you know you possess this evil paradoxical power. And he was still in love with her, naturally and unnaturally, and couldn't abide her suffering. Who could?

However, as I have already explained, Quinn had received a theophany only last night, seeing Merrick and his doppelganger spirit both passing into the Light.

So why in the name of God had he not consented to merely holding Mona's hand and seeing her through it? She certainly wasn't going to live until midnight.

Fact of the matter, he didn't have the strength to let her go. Of course Quinn never would have gone to her, I should add, he'd protected her from his secret valiantly, as noted, but she'd come here to Quinn, to his very room, begging to die in his bed. And he was a male vampire, and this was his territory, his lair, so to speak, and some male juices were flowing here, vampire or no, and now she was in his arms, and a monstrous possessiveness and high imaginative perception of saving her had taken hold of him.

And as surely as I knew all that, I knew he couldn't work the Dark Trick on her. He'd never done it before, and she was too frail. He'd kill her. And that was no way to go. Shoot, the child, having opted for the Dark Blood, could go to Hell! I had to get up there. Vampire Lestat to the rescue!

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Lestat, is this a comedy? We don't want a comedy." No, it's not!

It's just that all the debasing subterfuge is falling away from me, don't you see? Not the glamour you

understand, keep your mind on the image, baby! We're only losing those elements which tended to cheapen my discourse, and throw up a barrier of-artificial quaintness, more or less.

Okay. Onward. I went the human route, through the front door, clickity click, startling Clem, throwing him an ingratiating smile, "Quinn's friend, Lestat, yeah, gotcha, hey, and Clem, have that car ready, we're going into New Orleans afterwards, okay, dude?" and headed up the circular stairs, beaming down at little Jerome as I passed him, and giving Jasmine a quick hug as she stood stranded in the hallway, then telepathically turned the lock on Quinn's bedroom door and entered.

Entered? Why not went in? That's the artificial quaintness that has to go. You see my point? Matter of fact, I barreled into the room, if you must know.

Now, I'll let you in on a little secret. Nothing seen telepathically is ever one tenth as vivid as what a vampire sees with his own eyes. Telepathy is cool, no doubt about it, but our vision is almost intolerably vivid. That's why telepathy doesn't play much of a role in this book. I'm a sensualist anyway.

And the sight of Mona sitting on the foot of the big glowering four-poster was heartbreaking. The girl was in more pain than Quinn could conceivably realize. Even his arm around her was hurting her. I calculated without wanting to do it that she should have died about two hours ago. Her kidneys had shut down, her heart was sputtering and she couldn't fill her lungs with enough air to take deep breaths.

But her flawless green eyes were wide as she looked at me, and her fierce intellect understood on some complete mystical level, quite truly beyond words, what Quinn was trying to tell her: that the progress of her death could be utterly reversed, that she could join with us, that she could be ours forever. The vampiric state; the Undead. Immortal killer. Outside life for all time.

I know you, Little Witch. We live forever. She almost smiled.

Would the Dark Trick undo the damage which had been done to her miserable body? You betcha.

Two hundred years ago in a bedroom on the Ile St.-Louis, I had seen old age and consumption drop away from the emaciated form of my own mother as the Dark Blood realized its full magic within her. And in those nights, I'd been a mere postulant, compelled by love and fear to do the transformation. It had been my first time. I hadn't even known its name.

"Let me work the Dark Trick, Quinn," I said immediately.

I saw the relief flood through him. He was so innocent, so confused. Of course, I didn't much like it that he was four inches taller than me, but it really didn't matter. I meant it when I called him my Little Brother. I would have done just about anything for him. And then there was Mona herself. Witch child, beauty, ferocious spirit, almost nothing but spirit with the body desperately trying to hold on.

They drew closer to each other. I could see her hand clasping his. Could she feel the preternatural flesh? Her eyes were on me.

I paced the room. I took over. I put it to her in grand style. We were vampires, yes, but she had a choice, precious darling that she was. Why hadn't Quinn told her about the Light? Quinn had seen the Light with his own eyes. He knew the measure of Celestial Forgiveness more truly than I did.

"But you can choose the Light some other night, ch¨¦rie, " I said. I laughed. I couldn't stop myself. It was too miraculous.

She'd been sick for so long, suffered for so long. And that birth, that child she'd borne, it had been monstrous, taken from her, and I couldn't see to the core of it. But forget that. Her conception of eternity was to feel whole for one blessed hour, to breathe for one blessed hour without pain. How could she make this choice? No, there was no choice here for this girl. I saw the long corridor down which she'd traveled inexorably for so many years-the needles that had bruised her arms, and the bruises were all over her, the medicines that had sickened her, the half sleep in agony, the fevers, the shallow ruminating dreams, the loss of all blessed concentration when the books and films and letters had been put aside and even the deep darkness was gone in the seasonless glare of hospital lights and inescapable clatter and noise.

She reached for me. She nodded. Dried cracked lips. Strands of red hair. "Yes, I want it," she said.

And from Quinn's lips came the inevitable words: "Save her."

Save her? Didn't Heaven want her?

"They're coming for you," I said. "It's your family." I hadn't meant to blurt it. Was I under some sort of spell myself, looking into her eyes? But I could hear them clearly, the fast-approaching Mayfairs. Ambulance sans siren pulling into the pecan-tree drive, stretch limousine right behind it.

"No, don't let them take me," she cried. "I want to be with you."

"Honey bunch, this is for always," I said.

"Yes!"

Darkness eternal, yes, curse, grief, isolation, yes.

Oh, and it's the same old beat with you, Lestat, you Devil, you want to do it, you want to, you want to see it, you greedy little beast, you can't give her over to the angels and you know they're waiting! You know the God who can sanctify her suffering has purified her and will forgive her last cries.

I drew close to her, pushing gently against Quinn.

"Let her go, Little Brother," I said. I lifted my wrist, broke the inside skin with my teeth and put the blood to her lips. "It has to be done this way. I've got to give her some of my blood first." She kissed the blood. Her eyes squeezed shut. Shiver. Shock. "Otherwise, I can't bring her through. Drink, pretty girl. Good- bye, pretty girl, good-bye, Mona."