Anne Rice - The Vampire Lestat

"As I see it, " he said, "there's weakness and there's strength. And there is good art and bad art. And that is what I believe in. At the moment we are engaged in making what is rather bad art and it has nothing to do with goodness! "

"Our conversation " could have fumed into a full-scale fight here if I had said all that was on my mind about bourgeois pomposity. For I fully believed that our work at Renaud's was in many ways finer than what I saw at the grand theaters. Only the framework was less impressive. Why couldn't a bourgeois gentleman forget about the frame? How could he be made to look at something other than the surface? I took a deep breath.

"If goodness does exist, " he said, "then I'm the opposite of it. I'm evil and I revel in it. I thumb my nose at goodness. And if you must know, I don't play the violin for the idiots who come to Renaud's to make them happy. I play it for me, for Nicolas. " I didn't want to hear any more. It was time to go to bed. But I was bruised by this little talk and he knew it, and as I started to pull off my boots, he got up from the chair and came and sat next to me.

"I'm sorry, " he said in the most broken voice. It was so changed from the posture of a minute ago that I looked up at him, and he was so young and so miserable that I couldn't help putting my arm around him and telling him that he must not worry about it anymore.

"You have a radiance in you, Lestat, " he said. "And it draws everyone to you. It's there even when you're angry, or discouraged. "

"Poetry, " I said. "We're both tired. "

"No, it's true, " he said. "You have a light in you that's almost blinding. But in me there's only darkness. Sometimes I think it's like the darkness that infected you that night in the inn when you began to cry and to tremble. You were so helpless, so unprepared for it. I try to keep the darkness from you because I need your light. I need it desperately, but you don't need the darkness. "

"You're the mad one, " I said. "If you could see yourself, hear your own voice, your music-which of course you play for yourself-you wouldn't see darkness, Nicki. You'd see an illumination that is all your own. Somber, yes, but light and beauty come together in you in a thousand different patterns. " The next night the performance went especially well. The audience was a lively one, inspiring all of us to extra tricks. I did some new dance steps that for some reason never proved interesting in private rehearsal but worked miraculously on the stage. And Nicki was extraordinary with the violin, playing one of his own compositions. But towards the end of the evening I glimpsed the mysterious face again. It jarred me worse than it ever had, and I almost lost the rhythm of my song. In fact it seemed my head for a moment was swimming. When Nicki and I were alone I had to talk about it, about the peculiar sensation that I had fallen asleep on the stage and had been dreaming. We sat by the hearth together with our wine on the top of a little barrel, and in the firelight Nicki looked as weary and dejected as he had the night before. I didn't want to trouble him, but I couldn't forget about the face.

"Well, what does he look like? " Nicolas asked. He was warming his hands. And over his shoulder, I saw through the window a city of snow-covered rooftops that made me feel more cold. I didn't like this conversation.

"That's the worst part of it, " I said. "All I see is a face. He must be wearing something black, a cloak and even a hood. But it looks like a mask to me, the face, very white and strangely clear. I mean the lines in his face are so deep they seemed to be etched with black greasepaint. I see it for a moment. It veritably glows. Then when I look again, there's no one there. Yet this is an exaggeration. It's more subtle than that, the way he looks and yet . . . " The description seemed to disturb Nicki as much as it disturbed me. He didn't say anything. But his face softened somewhat as if he were forgetting his sadness.

"Well, I don't want to get your hopes up, " he said. He was very kind and sincere now. "But maybe it is a mask you're seeing. And maybe it's someone from the Comedie-Francaise come to see you perform. "

I shook my head. "I wish it was, but no one would wear a mask like that. And I'll tell you something else, too. " He waited, but I could see I was passing on to him some of my own apprehension. He reached over and took the wine bottle by the neck and poured a little in my glass.

"Whoever he is, " I said, "he knows about the wolves. "

"He what? "

"He knows about the wolves. " I was very unsure of myself. It was like recounting a dream I had all but forgotten. "He knows I killed the wolves back home. He knows the cloak I wear is lined with their fur. " "What are you talking about? You mean you've spoken to him? " "No, that's just it, " I said. This was so confusing to me, so vague. I felt that swimming sensation again. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. I've never spoken to him, never been near him. But he knows. "

"Ah, Lestat, " he said. He sat back on the bench. He was smiling at me in the most endearing way. "Next you'll be seeing ghosts. You have the strongest imagination of anyone I've ever known. "

"There are no ghosts, " I answered softly. I scowled at our little fire.

I laid a few more lumps of coal on it. All the humor went out of Nicolas.

"How in the hell could he know about the wolves? And how could you... "

"I told you already, I don't know. " I said. I sat thinking and not saying anything, disgusted, maybe, at how ridiculous it all seemed.

And then as we remained silent together, and the fire was the only sound or movement in the room, the name Wolfkiller came to me very distinctly as if someone had spoken it. But nobody had. I looked at Nicks, painfully aware that his lips had never moved, and I think all the blood drained from my face. I felt not the dread of death as I had on so many other nights, but an emotion that was really alien to me: fear. I was still sitting there, too unsure of myself to say anything, when Nicolas kissed me.

"Let's go to bed, " he said softly.

It must have been three o'clock in the morning; I'd heard the church bells in my sleep. And like all sensible men in Paris, we had our door barred and our window locked. Not good for a room with a coal fire, but the roof was a path to our window. And we were locked in. I was dreaming of the wolves. I was on the mountain and surrounded and I was swinging the old medieval flail. Then the wolves were dead again, and the dream was better, only I had all those miles to walk in the snow. The horse screamed in the snow. My mare turned into a loathsome insect half smashed on the stone floor. A voice said "Wolfkiller " long and low, a whisper that was like a summons and a tribute at the same time. I opened my eyes. Or I thought I did. And there was someone standing in the room. A tall, bent figure with its back to the little hearth. Embers still glowed on the hearth. The light moved upwards, etching the edges of the figure clearly, then dying out before it reached the shoulders, the head. But I realized I was looking right at the white face I'd seen in the audience at the theater, and my mind, opening, sharpening, realized the room was locked, that Nicolas lay beside me, that this figure stood over our bed. I heard Nicolas's breathing. I looked into the white face.

"Wolfkiller, " came the voice again. But the lips hadn't moved, and the figure drew nearer and I saw that the face was no mask. Black eyes, quick and calculating black eyes, and white skin, and some appalling smell coming from it, like the smell of moldering clothes in a damp room. I think I rose up. Or perhaps I was lifted. Because in an instant I was standing on my feet. The sleep was slipping off me like garments. I was backing up into the wall. The figure had my red cloak in its hands. Desperately I thought of my sword, my muskets. They were under the bed on the floor. And the thing thrust the red cloak towards me and then, through the fur-lined velvet, I felt its hand close on the lapel of my coat. I was torn forward. I was drawn off my feet across the room. I shouted for Nicolas. I screamed,