Page 40

A frantic vampire calling from Hong Kong poured out her fears to Benji.

"I appeal to the old ones," said Benji. "To Mekare, Maharet, Khayman, speak to us. Tell us why these immolations have happened. Is a new Time of Burning begun?"

Caller after caller begged for permission to come to Benji and Louis and Armand for protection.

"No. This is not possible," Benji confessed. "Believe me, the safest place for you is where you are. But avoid known coven houses, or vampire bars and taverns. And if you witness this horrific violence, take shelter. Remember those who strike with the Fire Gift must see you in order to destroy you! Don't flee in the open. If you possibly can, go underground."

Finally after many nights, Antoine broke through. In an anxious whisper he told Benji he'd been made by the great Vampire Lestat himself. "I am a musician!" he pleaded. "Allow me to come to you, I beg you. Confirm for me where you are."

"I wish I could, brother," said Benji, "but alas, I cannot. Don't seek to find me. And be careful. These are dreadful times for our kind."

That night late, Antoine went down in the darkened hotel dining room and he played the piano for the small, weary night staff who stopped only now and then to listen to him as he poured his soul out on the keys.

He would call again, from some other number. He would beg Benji to understand. Antoine wanted to play music like Sybelle played music. Antoine had this gift to offer. Antoine was telling the truth when he spoke of his maker. Benji had to understand.

For two months, Antoine worked on his music nightly, and during that time he read the later books of vampire scripture, the memoirs of Pandora, Marius, and Armand.

Now he knew all about the Bedouin, Benji Mahmoud, and his beloved Sybelle--Benji, a boy of twelve when the great vampire Marius had brought him over, and Sybelle, the eternal gamin who had once played only Beethoven's Appassionata over and over again, but who now went through the repertoire of all the greats Antoine knew and recent composers of whom he had not dreamed.

Deviled and driven by her playing, Antoine strove for perfection, assailing pianos in bars, restaurants, deserted classrooms and auditoriums, piano stores, and even private homes.

He was now composing music of his own again, breaking piano keys in his fervor, breaking strings.

Another terrible Burning took place in Taiwan.

Benji was plainly angry now as he appealed to the elders to shed light on what was happening to the tribe. "Lestat, where are you? Can you not be our champion against these forces of destruction? Or have you become Cain the slayer of your brothers and sisters yourself!"

At last Antoine had the money to purchase a violin of good quality. He went into the countryside to play under the stars. He rushed into Stravinsky and Bartok, whose work he'd learned from recordings. His head teemed with the new dissonance and wailing of modern music. He understood this tonal language, this aesthetic. It spoke for the fear and the pain, the fear that had become terror, the pain that had become the very blood in his veins.

He had to reach Benji and Sybelle.

More than anything it was critical loneliness that drove Antoine. He knew he'd end up in the earth again if he didn't find someone of his own kind to love. He dreamed of making music with Sybelle.

Am I an elder now? Or am I a maverick to be killed on sight?

One night Benji spoke of the hour, and of the weather, confirming surely that he was indeed broadcasting from the northern East Coast. Filling a leather backpack with his violin and his musical compositions, Antoine started north.

Just outside Philadelphia, he encountered another vagrant blood drinker. He almost fled. But the other came to him with open arms--a lean big-boned vampire with straggly hair and huge eyes, pleading with Antoine not to be frightened and not to hurt him, and they came together, all but sobbing in each other's embrace.

The boy's name was Killer and he was little more than a hundred years old. He'd been made, he said, in the very early days of the twentieth century in a backwater town in Texas by a wanderer like himself who charged Killer to bury his ashes after he'd burnt himself up.

"That's the way a lot of them did it in those days," said Killer, "like the way Lestat describes Magnus making him. They pick an heir when they're sick of it all, give us the Dark Blood, and then we have to scatter the ashes when they're gone. But what did I care? I was nineteen. I wanted to be immortal, and the world was big in 1910. You could go anywhere, do anything at all."

In a cheap motel, by the glimmering light of the muted television, as if it were the flicker of a fireplace, they talked for hours.

Killer had survived the long-ago massacre of Akasha the great Queen. He'd made it all the way to San Francisco in 1985 to hear the Vampire Lestat onstage, only to see hundreds of blood drinkers immolated after the concert. He and his companion Davis had been fatally separated, and Killer, sneaking into the slums of San Francisco, had found himself the next night one of a tiny remnant fleeing the city, thankful to be alive. He never saw Davis again.

Davis was a beautiful black vampire, and Killer had loved him. They'd been members of the Fang Gang in those times. They even wore those letters on their leather jackets and they drove Harleys and they never spent more than two nights in any one place. All over, those times.

"The Burning now, it has to happen," Killer told Antoine. "Things can't go on the way they are. I tell you, before Lestat came on the scene in those days, it wasn't like this. There just weren't so many of us, and me and my friends, we roamed the country towns in peace. There were coven houses then, havens like, and vampire bars where anyone could enter, you know, safe refuge, but the Queen wiped all that away. And with it went the last of vampire law and order. And since those times, the tramps and the mavericks have bred everywhere, and group fights group. There's no discipline, no rules. I tried to team up with the young ones in Philadelphia. They were like mad dogs."

"I know that old story," Antoine said, shivering, remembering those flames, those unspeakable flames. "But I have to reach Benji and Sybelle. I have to reach Lestat."

In all these years, Antoine had never told the story of his own life to anyone. He had not even told it to himself. And now, with the lamp of the Vampire Chronicles illuminating his strange journey, he poured it out to Killer unstintingly. He feared derision, but none came.

"He was my friend, Lestat," Antoine confessed. "He told me about his lover, Nicolas, who had been a violinist. He said he couldn't speak his heart to his little family, to Louis or Claudia, that they would laugh at him. So he spoke his heart only to me."

"You go to New York, my friend, and Armand will burn you to cinders," said Killer. "Oh, not Benji or Sybelle, no, and maybe not even Louis ... but Armand will do it and they won't bat an eye. And they can do it too. They have Marius's blood in their veins, those two. Even Louis's powerful now, got the blood of the older ones in him. But Armand is the one who kills. There are eight million people in Manhattan and four members of the Undead. I warn you, Antoine, they won't listen to you. They won't care that Lestat made you. Least I don't think they will. Hell, you won't even have a chance to tell them. Armand will hear you coming. Then he'll kill you on sight. You do know they have to see you to burn you up, don't you? They can't do it unless they can see you. But Armand will hunt you down and you won't be able to hide."