5

When I opened my eyes the next night, I knew what I meant to do. Whether or not I could stand to look at him wasn't important. I had made him this, and I had to rouse him from his stupor somehow.

The hunt hadn't changed him, though apparently he'd drunk and killed well enough. And now it was up to me to protect him from the revulsion I felt, and to go into Paris and get the one thing that might bring him around.

The violin was all he'd ever loved when he was alive. Maybe now it would awaken him. I'd put it in his hands, and he'd want to play it again, he'd want to play it with his new skill, and everything would change and the chill in my heart would somehow melt.

As soon as Gabrielle rose, I told her what I meant to do. "But what about the others?" she said. "You can't go riding into Paris alone."

"Yes, I can," I said. "You're needed here with him. If the little pests should come round, they could lure him into the open, the way he is now. And besides, I want to know what's happening under les Innocents. If we have a real truce, I want to know."

"I don't like your going," she said, shaking her head. "I tell you, if I didn't believe we should speak to the leader again, that we had things to learn from him and the old woman, I'd be for leaving Paris tonight."

"And what could they possibly teach us?" I said coldly. "That the sun really revolves around the earth? That the earth is flat?" But the bitterness of my words made me feel ashamed.

One thing they could tell me was why the vampires I'd made could hear each other's thoughts when I could not. But I was too crestfallen over my loathing of Nicki to think of all these things.

I only looked at her and thought how glorious it had been to see the Dark Trick work its magic in her, to see it restore her youthful beauty, render her again the goddess she'd been to me when I was a little child. To see Nicki change had been to see him die.

Maybe without reading the words in my soul she understood it only too well.

We embraced slowly. "Be careful," she said.

I should have gone to the flat right away to look for his violin. And there was still my poor Roget to deal with. Lies to tell. And this matter of getting out of Paris -- it seemed more and more the thing for us to do.

But for hours I did just what I wanted. I hunted the Tuileries and the boulevards, pretending there was no coven under les Innocents, that Nicki was alive still and safe somewhere, that Paris was all mine again.

But I was listening for them every moment. I was thinking about the old queen. And I heard them when I least expected it, on the boulevard du Temple, as I drew near to Renaud's.

Strange that they'd be in the places of light, as they called them. But within seconds, I knew that several of them were hiding behind the theater. And there was no malice this time, only a desperate excitement when they sensed that I was near.

Then I saw tile white face of the woman vampire, the darkeyed pretty one with the witch's hair. She was in the alleyway beside the stage door, and she darted forward to beckon to me.

I rode back and forth for a few moments. The boulevard was the usual spring evening panorama: hundreds of strollers amid the stream of carriage traffic, lots of street musicians, jugglers and tumblers, the lighted theaters with their doors open to invite the crowd. Why should I leave it to talk to these creatures? I listened. There were four of them actually, and they were desperately waiting for me to come. They were in terrible fear.

All right. I turned the horse and rode into the alley and all the way to the back where they hovered together against the stone wall.

The gray-eyed boy was there, which surprised me, and he had a dazed expression on his face. A tall blond male vampire stood behind him with a handsome woman, both of them swathed in rags like lepers. It was the pretty one, the dark-eyed one who had laughed at my little jest on the stairs under les Innocents, who spoke:

"You have to help us!" she whispered.

"I do?" I tried to steady the mare. She didn't like their company. "Why do I have to help you?" I demanded.

"He's destroying the coven," she said.

"Destroying us..." the boy said. But he didn't look at me. He was staring at the stones in front of him, and from his mind I caught flashes of what was happening, of the pyre lighted, of Armand forcing his followers into the fire.

I tried to get this out of my head. But the images were now coming from all of them. The dark-eyed pretty one looked directly into my eyes as she strove to sharpen the pictures Armand swinging a great charred beam of wood as he drove the others into the blaze, then stabbing them down into the flames with the beam as they struggled to escape.

"Good Lord, there were twelve of you!" I said. "Couldn't you fight?"

"We did and we are here," said the woman. "He burned six together, and the rest of us fled. In terror, we sought strange resting places for the day. We had never done this before, slept away from our sacred graves. We didn't know what would happen to us. And when we rose he was there. Another two he managed to destroy. So we are all that is left. He has even broken open the deep chambers and burned the starved ones. He has broken loose the earth to block the tunnels to our meeting place."

The boy looked up slowly.

"You did this to us," he whispered. "You have brought us all down."

The woman stepped in front of him.

"You must help us," she said. "Make a new coven with us. Help us to exist as you exist." She glanced impatiently at the boy.

"But the old woman, the great one?" I asked.

"It was she who commenced it," said the boy bitterly. "She threw herself into the fire. She said she would go to join Magnus. She was laughing. It was then that he drove the others into the flames as we fled."

I bowed my head. So she was gone. And all she had known and witnessed had gone with her, and what had she left behind but the simple one, the vengeful one, the wicked child who believed what she had known to be false.

"You must help us," said the dark-eyed woman. "You see, it's his right as coven master to destroy those who are weak, those who can't survive."

"He couldn't let the coven fall into chaos," said the other woman vampire who stood behind the boy. "Without the faith in the Dark Ways, the others might have blundered, alarmed the mortal populace. But if you help us to form a new coven, to perfect ourselves in new ways. . ."

"We are the strongest of the coven," said the man. "And if we can fend him off long enough, and manage to continue without him, then in time he may leave us alone."

"He will destroy us," the boy muttered. "He will never leave us alone. He will lie in wait for the moment when we separate. . ."

"He isn't invincible," said the tall male. "And he's lost all conviction. Remember that."

"And you have Magnus's tower, a safe place..." said the boy despairingly as he looked up at me.

"No, that I can't share with you," I said. "You have to win this battle on your own."

"But surely you can guide us..." said the man.

"You don't need me," I said. "What have you already learned from my example? What did you learn from the things I said last night?"

"We learned more from what you said to him afterwards," said the dark-eyed woman. "We heard you speak to him of a new evil, an evil for these times destined to move through the world in handsome human guise."

"So take on the guise," I said. "Take the garments of your victims, and take the money from their pockets. And you can then move among mortals as I do. In time you can gain enough wealth to acquire your own little fortress, your secret sanctuary. Then you will no longer be beggars or ghosts."

I could see the desperation in their faces. Yet they listened attentively.

"But our skin, the timbre of our voices.. ." said the darkeyed woman.

"You can fool mortals. It's very easy. It just takes a little skill."

"But how do we start?" said the boy dully, as if he were only reluctantly being brought into it. "What sort of mortals do we pretend to be?"

"Choose for yourself!" I said. "Look around you. Masquerade as gypsies if you will -- that oughtn't to be too difficult -- or better yet mummers," I glanced towards the light of the boulevard.

"Mummers!" said the dark-eyed woman with a little spark of excitement.

"Yes, actors. Street performers. Acrobats. Make yourselves acrobats. Surely you've seen them out there. You can cover your white faces with greasepaint, and your extravagant gestures and facial expressions won't even be noticed. You couldn't choose a more nearly perfect disguise than that. On the boulevard you'll see every manner of mortal that dwells in this city. You'll learn all you need to know."

She laughed and glanced at the others. The man was deep in thought, the other woman musing, the boy unsure.

"With your powers, you can become jugglers and tumblers easily," I said. "It would be nothing for you. You could be seen by thousands who'd never guess what you are."

"That isn't what happened with you on the stage of this little theater," said the boy coldly. "You put terror into their hearts."

"Because I chose to do it," I said. Tremor of pain. "That's my tragedy. But I can fool anyone when I want to and so can you."

I reached into my pockets and drew out a handful of gold crowns. I gave them to the dark-eyed woman. She took them in both hands and stared at them as if they were burning her. She looked up and in her eyes I saw the image of myself on Renaud's stage performing those ghastly feats that had driven the crowd into the streets.

But she had another thought in her mind. She knew the theater was abandoned, that I'd sent the troupe off.

And for one second, I considered it, letting the pain double itself and pass through me, wondering if the others could feel it. What did it really matter, after all?

"Yes, please," said the pretty one. She reached up and touched my hand with her cool white fingers. "Let us inside the theater! Please." She turned and looked at the back doors of Renaud's.

Let them inside. Let them dance on my grave.

But there might be old costumes there still, the discarded trappings of a troupe that had had all the money in the world to buy itself new finery. Old pots of white paint. Water still in the barrels. A thousand treasures left behind in the haste of departure.

I was numb, unable to consider all of it, unwilling to reach back to embrace all that had happened there.

"Very well," I said, looking away as if some little thing had distracted me. "You can go into the theater if you wish. You can use whatever is there."

She drew closer and pressed her lips suddenly to the back of my hand.

"We won't forget this," she said. "My name is Eleni, this boy is Laurent, the man here is Felix, and the woman with him, Eugenie. If Armand moves against you, he moves against us."

"I hope you prosper," I said, and strangely enough, I meant it. I wondered if any of them, with all their Dark Ways and Dark Rituals, had ever really wanted this nightmare that we all shared. They'd been drawn into it as I had, really. And we were all Children of Darkness now, for better or worse.

"But be wise in what you do here," I warned. "Never bring victims here or kill near here. Be clever and keep your hiding place safe."

It was three o'clock before I rode over the bridge on to the Ile St.Louis. I had wasted enough time. And now I had to find the violin.

But as soon as I approached Nicki's house on the quai I saw that something was wrong. The windows were empty. All the drapery had been pulled down, and yet the place was full of light, as if candles were burning inside by the hundreds. Most strange. Roget couldn't have taken possession of the flat yet. Not enough time had passed to assume that Nicki had met with foul play.

Quickly, I went up over the roof and down the wall to the courtyard window, and saw that the drapery had been stripped away there too.

And candles were burning in all the candelabra and in the wall sconces. And some were even stuck in their own wax on the pianoforte and the desk. The room was in total disarray.

Every book had been pulled off the shelf. And some of the books were in fragments, pages broken out. Even the music had been emptied sheet by sheet onto the carpet, and all the pictures were lying about on the tables with other small possessions -- coins, money, keys.

Perhaps the demons had wrecked the place when they took Nicki. But who had lighted all these candles? It didn't make sense.

I listened. No one in the flat. Or so it seemed. But then I heard not thoughts, but tiny sounds. I narrowed my eyes for a moment, just concentrating, and it came to me that I was hearing pages turn, and then something being dropped. More pages turning, stiff, old parchment pages. Then again the book dropped.

I raised the window as quietly as I could. The little sounds continued, but no scent of human, no pulse of thought.

Yet there was a smell here. Something stronger than the stale tobacco and the candle wax. The smell the vampires carried with them from the cemetery soil.

More candles in the hallway. Candles in the bedroom and the same disarray, books open as they lay in careless piles, the bedclothes snarled, the pictures in a heap. Cabinets emptied, drawers pulled out.

And no violin anywhere, I managed to note that.

And those little sounds coming from another room, pages being turned very fast.

Whoever he was -- and of course I knew who he had to be -- he did not give a damn that I was there! He had not even stopped to take a breath.

I went farther down the hall and stood in the door of the library and found myself staring right at him as he continued with his task.

It was Armand, of course. Yet I was hardly prepared for the sight he presented here.

Candle wax dripped down the marble bust of Caesar, flowed over the brightly painted countries of the world globe. And the books, they lay in mountains on the carpet, save for those of the very last shelf in the corner when he stood, in his old rags still, hair full of dust, ignoring me as he ran his hand over page after page, his eyes intent on the words before him, his lips half open, his expression like that of an insect in its concentration as it chews through a leaf.

Perfectly horrible he looked, actually. He was sucking everything out of the books!

Finally he let this one drop and took down another, and opened it and started devouring it in the same manner, fingers moving down the sentences with preternatural speed.

And I realized that he had been examining everything in the flat in this fashion, even the bed sheets and curtains, the pictures that had been taken off their hooks, the contents of cupboards and drawers. But from the books he was taking concentrated knowledge. Everything from Caesar's Gallic Wars to modern English novels lay on the floor.

But his manner wasn't the entire horror. It was the havoc he was leaving behind him, the utter disregard of everything he used.

And his utter disregard of me.

He finished his last book, or broke off from it, and went to the old newspapers stacked on a lower shelf.

I found myself backing out of the room and away from him, staring numbly at his small dirty figure. His auburn hair shimmered despite the dirt in it; his eyes burned like two lights.

Grotesque he seemed, among all the candles and the swimming colors of the flat, this filthy waif of the netherworld, and yet his beauty held sway. He hadn't needed the shadows of Notre Dame or the torchlight of the crypt to flatter him. And there was a fierceness in him in this bright light that I hadn't seen before.

I felt an overwhelming confusion. He was both dangerous and compelling. I could have looked on him forever, but an overpowering instinct said: Get away. Leave the place to him if he wants it. What does it matter now?

The violin. I tried desperately to think about the violin. To stop watching the movement of his hands over the words in front of him, the relentless focus of his eyes.

I turned my back on him and went into the parlor. My hands were trembling. I could hardly endure knowing he was there. I searched everywhere and didn't find the damned violin. What could Nicki have done with it? I couldn't think.

Pages turning, paper crinkling. Soft sound of the newspaper dropping to the floor.

Go back to the tower at once.

I went to pass the library quickly, when without warning his soundless voice shot out and stopped me. It was like a hand touching my throat. I turned and saw him staring at me.

Do you love them, your silent children? Do they love you?

That was what he asked, the sense disentangling itself from an endless echo.

I felt the blood rise to my face. The heat spread out over me like a mask as I looked at him.

All the books in the room were now on the floor. He was a haunt standing in the ruins, a visitant from the devil he believed in. Yet his face was so tender, so young.

The Dark Trick never brings love, you see, it brings only the silence. His voice seemed softer in its soundlessness, clearer, the echo dissipated. We used to say it was Satan's will, that the master and the fledgling not seek comfort in each other. It was Satan who had to be served, after all.

Every word penetrated me. Every word was received by a secret, humiliating curiosity and vulnerability. But I refused to let him see this. Angrily I said:

"What do you want of me?"

It was shattering something to speak. I was feeling more fear of him at this moment than ever during the earlier battles and arguments, and I hate those who make me feel fear, those who know things that I need to know, who have that power over me.

"It is like not knowing how to read, isn't it?" he said aloud. "And your maker, the outcast Magnus, what did he care for your ignorance? He did not tell you the simplest things, did he?"

Nothing in his expression moved as he spoke.

"Hasn't it always been this way? Has anyone ever cared to teach you anything?"

"You're taking these things from my mind. . ." I said. I was appalled. I saw the monastery where I'd been as a boy, the rows and rows of books that I could not read, Gabrielle bent over her books, her back to all of us. "Stop this!" I whispered.

It seemed the longest time had passed. I was becoming disoriented. He was speaking again, but in silence.

They never satisfy you, the ones you make. In silence the estrangement and the resentment only grow.

I willed myself to move but I wasn't moving. I was merely looking at him as he went on.

You long for me and 1 for you, and we alone in all this realm are worthy of each other. Don't you know this?

The toneless words seemed to be stretched, amplified, like a note on the violin drawn out forever and ever.

"This is madness," I whispered. I thought of all the things he had said to me, what he had blamed me for, the horrors the others had described -- that he had thrown his followers into the fire.

"Is it madness?" he asked. "Go then to your silent ones. Even now they say to each other what they cannot say to you."

"You're lying..." I said.

"And time will only strengthen their independence. But learn for yourself. You will find me easily enough when you want to come to me. After all, where can I go? What can I do? You have made me an orphan again."

"I didn't -- " I said.

"Yes, you did," he said. "You did it. You brought it down." Still there was no anger. "But I can wait for you to come, wait for you to ask the questions that only I can answer."

I stared at him for a long moment. I don't know how long. It was as if I couldn't move, and I couldn't see anything else but him, and the great sense of peace I'd known in Notre Dame, the spell he cast, was again working. The lights of the room were too bright. There was nothing else but light surrounding him, and it was as if he were coming closer to me and I to him, yet neither of us was moving. He was drawing me, drawing me towards him.

I turned away, stumbling, losing my balance. But I was out of the room. I was running down the hallway, and then I was climbing out of the back window and up to the roof.

I rode into the Ile de la Cite as if he were chasing me. And my heart didn't stop its frantic pace until I had left the city behind.

Hell's Bells ringing.

The tower was in the darkness against the first glimmer of the morning light. My little coven had already gone to rest in their dungeon crypt.

I didn't open the tombs to look at them, though I wanted desperately to do it, just to see Gabrielle and touch her hand.

I climbed alone towards the battlements to look out at the burning miracle of the approaching morning, the thing I should never see to its finish again. Hell's Bells ringing, my secret music . . .

But another sound was comming to me. I knew it as I went up the stairs. And I marveled at its power to reach me. It was like a song arching over an immense distance, low and sweet.

Once years ago, I had heard a young farm boy singing as he walked along the high road out of the village to the north. He hadn't known anyone was listening. He had thought himself alone in the open country, and his voice had a private power and purity that gave it unearthly beauty. Never mind the words of his old song.

This was the voice that was calling to me now. The lone voice, rising over the miles that separated us to gather all sounds into itself.

I was frightened again. Yet I opened the door at the top of the staircase and went out onto the stone roof. Silken the morning breeze, dreamlike the twinkling of the last stars. The sky was not so much a canopy as it was a mist rising endlessly above me, and the stars drifted upwards, growing ever smaller, in the mist.

The faraway voice sharpened, like a note sung in the high mountains, touching my chest where I had laid my hand.

It pierced me as a beam pierces darkness, singing Come to me; all things will be forgiven if only you come to me. I am more alone than I have ever been.

And there came in time with the voice a sense of limitless possibility, of wonder and expectation that brought with it the vision of Armand standing alone in the open doors of Notre Dame. Time and space were illusions. He was in a pale wash of light before the main altar, a lissome shape in regal tatters, shimmering as he vanished, and nothing but patience in his eyes. There was no crypt under les Innocents now. There was no grotesquery of the ragged ghost in the glare of Nicki's library, throwing down the books when he had finished with them as if they were empty shells.

I think I knelt down and rested my head against the jagged stones. I saw the moon like a phantom dissolving, and the sun must have touched her because she hurt me and I had to close my eyes.

But I felt an elation, an ecstasy. It was as if my spirit could know the glory of the Dark Trick without the blood flowing, in the intimacy of the voice dividing me and seeking the tenderest, most secret part of my soul.

What do you want of me, I wanted to say again. How can there be this forgiveness when there was such rancor only a short while ago? Your coven destroyed. Horrors I don't want to imagine ... I wanted to say it all again.

But I couldn't shape the words now any more than I could before. And this time, I knew that if I dared to try, the bliss would melt and leave me and the anguish would be worse than the thirst for blood.

Yet even as I remained still, in the mystery of this feeling, I knew strange images and thoughts that weren't my own.

I saw myself retreat to the dungeon and lift up the inanimate bodies of those kindred monsters I loved. I saw myself carrying them up to the roof of the tower and leaving them there in their helplessness at the mercy of the rising sun. Hell's Bells rang the alarm in vain for them. And the sun took them up and made them cinders with human hair.

My mind recoiled from this; it recoiled in the most heartbreaking disappointment.

"Child, still," I whispered. Ah, the pain of this disappointment, the possibility diminishing... "How foolish you are to think that such things could be done by me."

The voice faded; it withdrew itself from me. And I felt my aloneness in every pore of my skin. It was as if all covering had been taken from me forever and I would always be as naked and miserable as I was now.

And I felt far off a convulsion of power, as if the spirit that had made the voice was curling upon itself like a great tongue.

"Treachery!" I said louder. "But oh, the sadness of it, the miscalculation. How can you say that you desire me!"

Gone it was. Absolutely gone. And desperately, I wanted it back even if it was to fight with me. I wanted that sense of possibility, that lovely flare again.

And I saw his face in Notre Dame, boyish and almost sweet, like the face of an old da Vinci saint. A horrid sense of fatality passed over me.