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"But I have to go," Antoine said. He burst into tears. He wrapped his arms tight around himself and rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed. His long black hair fell down over his face. "I have to get back to Lestat. I have to. And if anyone can help me find him, it's Louis, isn't it?"
"Hell, man," said Killer. "Don't you get it? Everybody's looking for Lestat. And these Burnings are happening now. And they're moving west. No one's seen hide nor hair of Lestat in the last two years, man. And the last sighting in Paris could have been bogus. There's lots of swaggering dudes walking around pretending to be Lestat. I was down in New Orleans last year and there were so many fake Lestats swaggering around in pirate shirts and cheap boots, you wouldn't believe it. The place is overrun. They drove me out of the city after one night."
"I can't go on alone," said Antoine. "I have to reach them. I have to play my violin for Sybelle. I have to be part of them."
"Look, old buddy," said Killer, softened and sympathetic and putting his arm around Antoine. "Why don't you just come out west with me? We both rode out the last Burning, didn't we? We'll ride this one out too."
Antoine couldn't answer. He was in such pain. He saw the pain in bright explosive colors in his mind as he had when he was so badly burned years and years ago. Red and yellow and orange was this pain. He took up the violin and began to play it, softly, as softly as you can play a violin, and he let it mourn with him for all he'd ever been or might have been and then sing of his hopes and dreams.
The next night after they'd hunted the country roads, he told Killer of his loneliness over the centuries, of how he'd grown to love mortals the way Lestat had once loved him, and how he'd pulled away from them finally, always afraid that he couldn't make another, as Lestat had made him. Lestat had been badly wounded when he'd made Antoine. It hadn't been easy. It was nothing like the majestic procedure of the Dark Trick described in the pages of Marius's memoir, Blood and Gold. Marius made it sound like the giving of a sacrament when he'd made Armand in the 1500s in those Renaissance rooms in Venice, filled with Marius's paintings. It had been nothing like that at all.
"Well, I can tell you as a fact," said Killer, "that lately it's not been working at all. Right before these massacres started, they were all talking about it, how hard it was to bring somebody over. It was like the Blood was played out. Too many in the Blood. Think about it. The power comes from the Mother, from that demon, Amel, who entered into Akasha and then passed into Mekare, the Queen of the Damned. Well, maybe Amel really is an invisible creature with tentacles just like Mekare once said, and those tentacles have stretched just as far as they can. They just can't stretch forever."
Killer sighed. Antoine looked away. He was obsessed.
"I'm going to tell you something horrible I hate to tell anybody," said Killer. "Last two times I tried to bring somebody over, it flat-out failed. Now it was never like that before, I can tell you." Killer shook his head. "I tried to bring over the most beautiful little girl I ever saw in one of those towns back there, and it just did not work. It just didn't work. Come dawn, I did the only thing I could do--chop off her head and bury her, and I'd promised her eternal life and I had to do that. She was a zombie thing, and she couldn't even talk and her heart wasn't beating, but she wasn't dead."
Antoine shuddered. He'd never had the courage to try. But if this was true, if he did not have the slightest hope of ever ending this loneliness by making another, well, then, that was all the more reason to press on.
Killer laughed under his breath. "It used to seem so easy," he said, "back when I was making members of the old Fang Gang, but now the filth and the rabble and the trash are everywhere, and even if you make them, they'll turn on you, rob you, betray you, and take off with someone else. I tell you these massacres have to come. They have to. There's bad dudes selling the Blood. Can you believe? Selling the Blood. Least they were. I expect they're played out too and running for their lives now like everybody else."
Again Killer begged Antoine to stay with him.
"For all we know, Armand and Louis and Lestat are all in this together," Killer said. "Maybe they're all doing it, the big heroes of the Vampire Chronicles. But these things have to happen, like I said. I know this is what Benji thinks, but he won't say it. He can't. But this is worse than before. Can you hear them, the voices? There was a Burning last night in Kathmandu. Think about it, man. It's going to move across India, whoever's doing it, and then into the Middle East. It's worse than the last time. It's being more thorough. I can sense it. I remember. I know."
Tearfully, they parted a short way southeast of New York. Killer wouldn't go any farther. Benji's broadcast the night before had confirmed Killer's worst fears. There had been no direct witnesses to the Burning when it hit Kolkata. Vampires for hundreds of miles caught images of the immolation. They were fleeing west.
"All right, if you're determined to go through with this," said Killer. "I'll tell you what I know. Armand and the others live in a mansion on the Upper East Side half a block from Central Park. It's three townhouses linked together, and each one's got a door to the street. There are little Greek columns on each little porch and big limbed trees growing out front surrounded by little skirts of iron.
"These townhouses are maybe five stories high and they've got these fancy little iron balconies up high on the windows that aren't balconies at all."
"I know what you mean," said Antoine gratefully. He was picking up the images from Killer's mind, but it seemed rude to say so.
"It's gorgeous inside," said Killer, "like a palace, and they leave all those windows open on nights like this, you know, and they'll see you long before you ever see them. They could be anywhere up in those high windows looking out long before you even get close. The mansion's got a name, Trinity Gate. And a lot of blood drinkers can tell you, it's the gate of death to us if we go there. And remember, my friend, it's Armand who's the killer. Back years ago, when Lestat was down and out in New Orleans--after he'd met Memnoch the Devil--it was Armand who kept the trash away from him. Lestat was sleeping kind of in this chapel in this old convent...."
"I remember from the books," said Antoine.
"Yeah, well, it was Armand who cleared the town. Antoine, please don't go there. He'll blast you right off the face of the Earth."
"I have to go," said Antoine. How could he ever explain to this simple survivor that existence was unbearable to him as it was? Even this blood drinker's company had not been enough to fill the gnawing emptiness inside him.
They embraced before parting. Killer repeated that he was headed out to California. If the massacres were moving west, well, he'd move west too. He'd heard tell of a great vampire physician who lived in Southern California, an immortal named Fareed, who actually studied the Dark Blood under microscopes and sometimes sheltered roamers like Killer, if they would donate some tissue and some blood for experiments.
Fareed had been made with ancient blood by a vampire named Seth, who was almost as old as the Mother. And nobody could hurt Seth or Fareed. Well, Killer was going to look for that doctor in California because he figured that was his only hope. He begged Antoine to change his mind and come with him. But Antoine could not.
Antoine wept afterwards. Alone again. And as he lay down to sleep that morning, he heard the voices wailing, powerful ones crying out, conveying the word. The Burning was annihilating the vampires of India. A great sense of doom filled Antoine. When he thought of all the years he'd roamed and slept in the earth he felt he had wasted the gift Lestat gave him. Waste. He had never thought of it as precious. It had been only a new kind of suffering.
But that's not what it was for Benji Mahmoud. "We are a tribe and we should think like one," Benji said often. "Why should Hell have dominion over us?"
Antoine was bound and determined to continue. He had a plan. He wouldn't try to speak to these powerful Manhattan vampires. He would let his music speak for him. Hadn't he done that all his long life?
Outside the city--before
he stole a car to drive into Manhattan--he had his black hair cut and trimmed modern style by a precious little girl in a salon full of perfume and lighted candles, and then outfitted himself in a fine Armani suit of black wool with a Hugo Boss shirt and a gleaming Versace silk tie. Even his shoes were fancy, made of Italian leather, and he carefully rubbed his white skin with oil and clean paper ash to make himself look less luminescent in the bright city lights. If all these blandishments gave them a moment's pause he would use that pause to make the violin sing.
At last he was on foot on Fifth Avenue, having ditched the stolen car on a side street, when he heard the wild unmistakable music of Sybelle. And there, yes, was the great townhouse complex described by Killer, Trinity Gate, facing downtown with its many warmly lighted windows, and he could all but hear the powerful heart of Armand.
As he dropped the violin case at his feet, and tuned his instrument rapidly, Sybelle broke off the long turbulent piece she'd been playing and suddenly moved into the soft beautiful Chopin etude "Tristesse."
