Anne Rice - Servant of the Bones

Jonathan, you know now what I remembered, but I didn’t remember then, you see. It was confusion. It was as if something were trying to force me to see my existence as a continuum. But I didn’t trust it. I must have been very close to Zurvan’s teachings a thousand times over the years and never knew it, never remembering Zurvan. Why else did I want to avenge this girl? Why else did I despise the Rebbe for his lack of mercy on me? Why else was this man’s evil fascinating me so much that I hadn’t already killed him?

He broke in with his gentle, beguiling voice.

“And so we’re here, at my home, Azriel,” he said.

He pulled me back fast.

“We are at my very door.” He made a dreamy, weary gesture towards the people on either side of us. “Don’t let them frighten you. I must invite you, please, to come in.”

I saw rows of lighted windows high above.

The doors of the car had been unlocked with a loud distinct click. Now someone meant to open the door to my right and his left. In a split second, I saw a pathway made for him, beneath an awning. Ropes hung from bronze stanchions held back the multitude. There were television cameras bearing down upon us. I saw men in uniforms restraining those who screamed and cheered.

“But can they see you?” Gregory asked now, confidentially, as if we shared a secret.

It was a break in an almost perfect chain of gestures for him. Out of generosity I was tempted to let it go. But I didn’t.

“See for yourself whether or not they can see me, Gregory,” I answered. I reached down and gathered up the casket, and holding it firmly under my left arm, I took a grip of the door handle and stepped over him and out of the car before him onto the sidewalk in the blazing electric light.

I stood on the sidewalk. A great building rose before me. I held the casket of the bones tight to my chest. I could barely see the top of this building.

Everywhere I looked were shouting faces. Everywhere I looked, I looked at those who looked at me. It was a babble of people calling for Gregory, and others calling for blood for Esther, and I couldn’t untangle the prayers.

Cameras and microphones descended; a woman shouted questions furiously at me and far too rapidly for me to understand. The crowd almost broke the ropes, but more uniformed men came to restore order. The people were both the young and the old.

The television lights gave off a powerful heat that hurt the skin of my face. I raised my hand to shield my eyes.

A thunderous and united cry rose as Gregory appeared now, with the helping hand of his driver, brushing his coat that was covered with dust from the casket, and he took his place at my side.

His lips came close to my ear.

“Indeed, they do see you,” he said.

The dimness hovered, cries in other tongues deafened me, and I shook away again the mantle of sadness and looked right into the blaring lights and screaming faces that were here.

“Gregory, Gregory, Gregory,” the people chanted. “One Temple, One God, One Mind.”

First it overlapped, prayer atop prayer, as if it were meant to do so, coming at us in waves, but then the crowd brought their voices together:

“Gregory, Gregory, Gregory. One Temple, One God, One Mind.”

He lifted his hand and waved, turning from left to right and all around, nodding and smiling and waving to those who stood behind him, and to those far off, and he kissed his hand, the very hand I’d kissed, and threw this kiss and a thousand other such kisses to the people who shrieked and called his name in delight.

“Blood, blood, blood for Esther!” someone screamed.

“Yes, blood for her! Who killed her!”

The prayer came roaring over it, but others had taken it up, “Blood for Esther,” stamping their feet in time with their words.

“Blood, blood, blood for Esther.”

Those with cameras and microphones broke through the ropes, pressing against us.

“Gregory, who killed her?”

“Gregory who is this with you?”

“Gregory, who is your friend?”

“Sir, are you a member of the Temple?”

They were talking to me!

“Sir, tell us who you are!”

“Sir, what is in the box you’re carrying?”

“Gregory, tell us what the church will do?”

He turned and faced the cameras.

A trained squadron of dark-dressed men rushed to surround us and separate us from those questioning us, and en masse they pushed us gently up the lighted path, past the throng.

But Gregory spoke loudly:

“Esther was the lamb! The lamb was slain by our enemies. Esther was the lamb!”

The crowd went into a frenzy of approbation and applause.

Beside him, I stared right at the cameras, at the lights beaming down, at the flash of thousands of small hand-held cameras snapping out still pictures.

He drew in his breath to speak, in full command, as any ruler might, standing before his own throne. Loudly, he intoned his words:

“The murder of Esther was only their warning; they have let us know that the time is come when any righteous person will be destroyed!”

Again, the crowd screamed and cheered, vows were declared, chants were taken up.

“Don’t give them an excuse!” Gregory declared. “No excuse to enter our churches or our homes. They come clothed in many disguises!”

The crowd pressed in on us in a dangerous surge.

Gregory’s arm closed around me, caressingly.

I looked up. The building pierced the sky.

“Azriel, come inside,” he said, again speaking close to my ear.

There came the loud sound of shattering glass. An alarm bell clanged. The crowd had pushed in one of the lower windows of the tower. Attendants rushed to the spot. Whistles sounded. I could see garbed police on horseback in the street.

We were drawn in through the doors across a floor of shimmering marble. Others held back the crowd. But still others surrounded us, making it near impossible for us to do anything but go where they forced us to go.

I was madly exhilarated, alive in the midst of this. Astonished and invigorated. Something told me that my former masters had been men of stealth, wise, keeping their power to themselves.

Here we stood in the capital of the world: Gregory sparkled with the surety of his power, and I walked beside him, drunk on being alive, drunk on all the eyes turned to us.

At last a pair of bronze doors rose up before us, carved with angels, and when they parted we were thrust together inside a mirrored chamber, and Gregory gestured for all the others to remain outside.

The doors swept closed. It was an elevator. It began to rise. I saw myself in the mirrors, shocked by my long and thick hair and the seeming ferocity of my expression, and I saw him, cold and commanding as ever, watching me, and watching himself. I appeared years younger than him, and just as human—but we might have been brothers, both of us swarthy, with sun-darkened skin.

His features were finer, eyebrows thinner and combed; I saw the prominent bones of my forehead and my jaw. But still, it was as if we were of the same tribe.

As the elevator moved higher and higher, I realized we were now completely alone, staring at one another, in a floating cabin of mirrored light.

But no sooner had I absorbed this little shock, this one of many, and no sooner had I righted myself and anchored my weight against the slight swaying of the elevator, than the doors were opened again upon a large sanctuary that appeared both splendid and private: a demilune entranceway of inlaid marble, doorways opening to left and right, and just before us a broad corridor leading to a distant chamber whose windows were wide open to the twinkling night.

We were higher than the mightiest ziggurat, castle, or forest. We were in the realm of the airy spirits.