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How wondrous it seemed suddenly that such a struggle could now lay waste with such undeniable power the old dead dualities which had enslaved him for so long.

But he looked down at the man who lay dead at his feet, and a terrible sorrow took hold of him.

Death is the mother of beauty.

It was a line from a poem by Wallace Stevens, and it came to him now with a painful irony. Beauty for me perhaps but not beauty for this one whom I have destroyed.

He knew terror for a moment, terror that might never really leave him no matter how much he came to understand, or to learn. Terror. Terror that this tender young mortal might have lost his soul to utter meaninglessness and annihilation, and that all of them, his blood drinker brothers and sisters, no matter how powerful, how old, how grand, might someday fall victim to the same brutal end.

After all, what ghost or spirit, no matter how eloquent or skilled, could claim that anything of sentience lay beyond the thick mysterious air surrounding this planet? Again he thought of Stevens's poem.

Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be

The blood of paradise? And shall the earth

Seem all of paradise that we shall know?

His heart was breaking for the young man who lay there dead, eyes closed in the final sleep. The remains were already slowly perishing in the warm rain. His heart broke for all the victims everywhere of blood lust, and war, and accident, and old age, and illness, and unendurable pain.

But his heart broke a little for once for himself too.

And that perhaps was the real change in him, the change that he welcomed--that he could see himself as part now of all this great and glistening world. He was not part of some mindless force that sought to destroy it. No, he was part of it. He was part of this, this night with its sweet mild rain, and this whispering garden with its fragrant flowers and its trees, and the breezes that mov

ed their branches. And he was part of the roar of the city rising around him, and part of the sharp shining music that came from within the house. He was part of the grass beneath his feet, and the tiny relentless hordes of winged things that sought to devour the human waiting there helplessly for a proper grave.

He thought of Lestat again, confident, smiling, wearing the mantle of power as easily as he had always worn his finery, old and new.

He said under his breath:

"Beloved maker, beloved Prince, I will be with you soon."

Tuesday

November 26, 2013

Palm Desert

Appendix 1

Characters and Their Chronology

Amel--A spirit manifesting to humans six thousand years ago or in 4000 B.C.

Akasha--The first vampire, made by a fusion with the spirit Amel six thousand years ago, or in 4000 B.C. Thereafter known as the Mother, or the Sacred Fount, or the Queen.

Enkil--The husband of Akasha and the first vampire made almost immediately by her.

Khayman--The second vampire made by Akasha within the first years after the fusion.

Maharet and Mekare--Twin witches born six thousand years ago. Mekare was made a vampire by Khayman. Maharet was made by Mekare. Khayman, Maharet, and Mekare became the First Brood rebelling against Akasha and making other blood drinkers when and where they chose.

Nebamun, later Gregory Duff Collingsworth--Made by Akasha in the first few years to lead her Queens Blood troops against the First Brood.

Seth--The human son of Akasha, brought into the Blood perhaps fifteen to twenty years after the fusion.

Sevraine--A Nordic woman brought into the Blood illegally by Nebamun (Gregory) about five thousand years ago, or one thousand years after the Blood Genesis. The maker of several vampires yet unnamed.

Rhoshamandes--A male from Crete, brought into the Blood at the same time as Sevraine, to serve in the Queens Blood. Made directly by Akasha.