3
The week before our record album went on sale, they reached out for the first time to threaten us over the telephone wires.
Secrecy regarding the rock band called The Vampire Lestat had been expensive but almost impenetrable. Even the book publishers of my autobiography had cooperated in full. And during the long months of recording and filmmaking, I hadn't seen a single one of them in New Orleans, nor heard them roaming about.
Yet somehow they had obtained the unlisted number and into the electronic answering machine they issued their admonitions and epithets.
"Outcast. We know what you are doing. We are ordering you to stop." "Come out where we can see you. We dare you to come out."
I had the band holed up in a lovely old plantation house north of New Orleans, pouring the Dom Perignon for them as they smoked their hashish cigarettes, all of us weary of anticipation and preparation, eager for the first live audience in San Francisco, the first certain taste of success.
Then my lawyer, Christine, sent on the first phone messages -- uncanny how the equipment captured the timbre of the unearthly voices -- and in the middle of the night, I drove my musicians to the airport and we flew west.
After that, even Christine didn't know where we were hiding. The musicians themselves were not entirely sure. In a luxurious ranch house in Carmel Valley we heard our music for the first time over the radio. We danced as our first video films appeared nationwide on the television cable.
And each evening I went alone to the coastal city of Monterey to pick up Christine's communications. Then I went north to hunt.
I drove my sleek powerful black Porsche all the way to San Francisco, taking the hairpin curves of the coast road at intoxicating speed. And in the immaculate yellow gloom of the big city skid row I stalked my killers a little more cruelly and slowly than before.
The tension was becoming unbearable.
Still I didn't see the others. I didn't hear them. All I had were those phone messages from immortals I'd never known:
"We warn you. Do not continue this madness. You are playing a more dangerous game than you realize." And then the recorded whisper that mortal ears could not hear:
"Traitor!" "Outcast!" "Show yourself, Lestat!"
If they were hunting San Francisco, I didn't see them. But then San Francisco is a dense and crowded city. And I was sly and silent as I had always been.
Finally the telegrams came pouring in to the Monterey postbox. We had done it. Sales of our album were breaking records here and in Europe. We could perform in any city we wanted after San Francisco. My autobiography was in all the bookstores from coast to coast. The Vampire Lestat was at the top of the charts.
And after the nightly hunt in San Francisco, I started riding the long length of Divisadero Street. I let the black carapace of the Porsche crawl past the ruined Victorian houses, wondering in which one of these -- if any -- Louis had told the tale of Interview with the Vampire to the mortal boy. I was thinking constantly about Louis and Gabrielle. I was thinking about Armand. I was thinking about Marius, Marius whom I had betrayed by telling the whole tale.
Was The Vampire Lestat stretching its electronic tentacles far enough to touch them? Had they seen the video films: The Legacy of Magnus, The Children of Darkness, Those Who Must Be Kept? I thought of the other ancient ones whose names I'd revealed: Mael, Pandora, Ramses the Damned.
The fact was, Marius could have found me no matter what the secrecy or the precautions. His powers could have bridged even the vast distances of America. If he was looking, if he had heard . . .
The old dream came back to me of Marius cranking the motion picture camera, of the flickering patterns on the wall of the sanctum of Those Who Must Be Kept. Even in recollection it seemed impossibly lucid, made my heart trip.
And gradually I realized that I possessed a new concept of loneliness, a new method of measuring a silence that stretched to the end of the world. And all I had to interrupt it were those menacing recorded preternatural voices which carried no images as their virulency increased:
"Don't dare to appear on stage in San Francisco. We warn you. Your challenge is too vulgar, too contemptuous. We will risk anything, even a public scandal, to punish you."
I laughed at the incongruous combination of archaic language and the unmistakable American sound. What were they like, those modern vampires? Did they affect breeding and education once they walked with the undead? Did they assume a certain style? Did they live in covens or ride about on big black motorcycles, as I liked to do?
The excitement was building in me uncontrollably. And as I drove alone through the night with the radio blaring our music, I sensed a purely human enthusiasm mounting in me.
I wanted to perform the way my mortals, Tough Cookie and Alex and Larry, wanted to perform. After the grueling work of building the records and films, I wanted us to raise our voices together before the screaming throng. And at odd moments I remembered those long-ago nights at Renaud's little theater too clearly. The strangest details came back, the feel of the white paint as I had smoothed it over my face, the smell of the powder, the instant of stepping before the footlights.
Yes, it was all coming together, and if the wrath of Marius came with it, well, I deserved it, did I not?
San Francisco charmed me, subdued me somewhat. Not hard to imagine my Louis in this place. Almost Venetian, it seemed, the somber multicolored mansions and tenements rising wall to wall over the narrow black streets. Irresistible the lights sprinkled over hilltop and vale; and the hard brilliant wilderness of downtown skyscrapers shooting up like a fairytale forest out of an ocean of mist.
Each night on my return to Carmel Valley, I took out the sacks of fan mail forwarded to Monterey from New Orleans, and I looked through them for the vampire writing: characters inscribed a little too heavily, style slightly old-fashioned maybe a more outrageous display of supernatural talent in a handwritten letter made to look as if it had been printed in Gothic style. But there was nothing but the fervent devotion of mortals.
Dear Lestat,
My friend Sheryl and I love you, and we can't get tickets for the San Francisco concert even though we stood in line for six hours. Please send us two tickets. We will be your victims. You can drink our blood.
Three o'clock in the morning on the night before the San Francisco concert:
The cool green paradise of Carmel Valley was asleep. I was dozing in the giant "den" before the glass wall that faced the mountains. I was dreaming off and on of Marius. Marius said in my dream:
"Why did you risk my vengeance?"
And I said: "You turned your back on me."
"That is not the reason," he said. "You act on impulse, you want to throw all the pieces in the air."
"I want to affect things, to make something happen!" I said. In the dream I shouted, and I felt suddenly the presence of the Carmel Valley house around me. Just a dream, a thin mortal dream.
Yet something, something else ... a sudden "transmission" like a vagrant radio wave intruding upon the wrong frequency, a voice saying Danger. Danger to us all.
For one split second the vision of snow, ice. Wind howling. Something shattered on a stone floor, broken glass. Lestat! Danger!
I awoke.
I was not lying on the couch any longer. I was standing and looking towards the glass doors. I could hear nothing, see nothing but the dim outline of the hills, the black shape of the helicopter hovering over its square of concrete like a giant fly.
With my soul I listened. I listened so hard I was sweating. Yet no more of the "transmission." No images.
And then the gradual awareness that there was a creature outside in the darkness, that I was hearing tiny physical sounds.
Someone out there walking in the stillness. No human scent.
One of them was out there. One of them had penetrated the secrecy and was approaching beyond the distant skeletal silhouette of the helicopter, through the open field of high grass.
Again I listened. No, not a shimmer to reinforce the message of Danger. In fact the mind of the being was locked to me. I was getting only the inevitable signals of a creature passing through space.
The rambling low-roofed house slumbered around me -- a giant aquarium, it seemed, with its barren white walls and the blue flickering light of the silent television set. Tough Cookie and Alex in each other's arms on the rug before the empty fireplace. Larry asleep in the cell-like bedroom with the carnally indefatigable groupie called Salamander whom they had "picked up" in New Orleans before we came west. Sleeping bodyguards in the other low-ceilinged modern chambers, and in the bunkhouse beyond the great blue oyster-shell swimming pool.
And out there under the clear black sky this creature coming, moving towards us from the highway, on foot. This thing that I sensed now was completely alone. Beat of a supernatural heart in the thin darkness. Yes, I can hear it very distinctly. The hills were like ghosts in the distance, the yellow blossoms of the acacias gleaming white under the stars.
Not afraid of anything, it seemed. Just coming. And the thoughts absolutely impenetrable. That could mean one of the old ones, the very skilled ones, except the skilled ones would never crush the grass underfoot. This thing moved almost like a human. This vampire had been "made" by me.
My heart was skipping. I glanced at the tiny lights of the alarm box half concealed by the gathered drapery in the corner. Promise of sirens if anything, mortal or immortal, tried to penetrate this house.
On the edge of the white concrete he appeared. Tall, slender figure. Short dark hair. And then he paused as if he could see me in the electric blue haze behind the glass veil.
Yes, he saw me. And he moved towards me, towards the light.
Agile, traveling just a little too lightly for a mortal. Black hair, green eyes, and the limbs shifting silkily under the neglected garments: a frayed black sweater that hung shapelessly from his shoulders, legs like long black spokes.
I felt the lump come up in my throat. I was trembling. I tried to remember what was important, even in this moment, that I must scan the night for others, must be careful. Danger. But none of that mattered now. I knew. I shut my eyes for a second. It did not help anything, make anything easier.
Then my hand went out to the alarm buttons and I turned them off. I opened the giant glass doors and the cold fresh air moved past me into the room.
He ran past the helicopter, turning and stepping away like a dancer to look up at it, his head back, his thumbs hooked very casually in the pockets of his black jeans. When he looked at me again, I saw his face distinctly. And he smiled.
Even our memories can fail us. He was proof of that, delicate and blinding as a laser as he came closer, all the old images blown away like dust.
I flicked on the alarm system again, closed the doors on my mortals, and turned the key in the lock. For a second I thought, I cannot stand this. And this is only the beginning. And if he is here, only a few steps away from me now, then surely the others, too, will come. They will all come.
I turned and went towards him, and for a silent moment I just studied him in the blue light falling through the glass. My voice was tight when I spoke:
"Where's the black cape and 'finely tailored' black coat and the silk tie and all that foolishness?" I asked.
Eyes locked on each other.
Then he broke the stillness and laughed without making a sound. But he went on studying me with a rapt expression that gave me a secret joy. And with the boldness of a child, he reached out and ran his fingers down the lapel of my gray velvet coat.
"Can't always be the living legend," he said. The voice was like a whisper that wasn't a whisper. And I could hear his French accent so clearly, though I had never been able to hear my own.
I could scarcely bear the sound of the syllables, the complete familiarity of it.
And I forgot all the stiff surly things I had planned to say and I just took him in my arms.
We embraced the way we never had in the past. We held each other the way Gabrielle and I used to do. And then I ran my hands over his hair and his face, just letting myself really see him, as if he belonged to me. And he did the same. Seems we were talking and not talking. True silent voices that didn't have any words. Nodding a little. And I could feel him brimming with affection and a feverish satisfaction that seemed almost as strong as my own.
But he was quiet suddenly, and his face became a little drawn.
"I thought you were dead and gone, you know," he said. It was barely audible.
"How did you find me here?" I asked.
"You wanted me to," he answered. Flash of innocent confusion. He gave a slow shrug of the shoulders.
Everything he did was magnetizing me just the way it had over a century ago. Fingers so long and delicate, yet hands so strong.
"You let me see you and you let me follow you," he said. "You drove up and down Divisadero Street looking for me."
"And you were still there?"
"The safest place in the world for me," he said. "I never left it. They came looking for me and they didn't find me and then they went away. And now I move among them whenever I want and they don't know me. They never knew what I looked like, really."
"And they'd try to destroy you if they knew," I said.
"Yes," he answered. "But they've been trying to do that since the Theater of the Vampires and the things that happened there. Of course Interview with the Vampire gave them some new reasons. And they do need reasons to play their little games. They need the impetus, the excitement. They feed upon it like blood." His voice sounded labored for a second.
He took a deep breath. Hard to talk about all this. I wanted to put my arms around him again but I didn't.
"But at the moment," he said, "I think you are the one that they want to destroy. And they do know what you look like." Little smile. "Everybody knows now what you look like. Monsieur Le Rock Star."
He let his smile broaden. But the voice was polite and low as it had always been. And the face suffused with feeling. There had been not the slightest change there yet. Maybe there never would be.
I slipped my arm around his shoulder and we walked together away from the lights of the house. We walked past the great gray hulk of the copter and into the dry sunbaked field and towards the hills.
I think to be this happy is to be miserable, to feel this much satisfaction is to burn.
"Are you going to go through with it?" he asked. "The concert tomorrow night?"
Danger to us all. Had it been a warning or a threat?
"Yes, of course," I said. "What in hell could stop me from it?"
"I would like to stop you," he answered. "I would have come sooner if I could. I spotted you a week ago, then lost you."
"And why do you want to stop me?"
"You know why," he said. "I want to talk to you." So simple, the words, and yet they had such meaning.
"There'll be time after," I answered. "'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.' Nothing is going to happen. You'll see." I kept glancing at him and away from him, as if his green eyes were hurting me. In modern parlance he was a laser beam. Deadly and delicate he seemed. His victims had always loved him.
And I had always loved him, hadn't I, no matter what happened, and how strong could love grow if you had eternity to nourish it, and it took only these few moments in time to renew its momentum, its heat?
"How can you be sure of that, Lestat?" he asked. Intimate his speaking my name. And I had not brought myself to say Louis in that same natural way.