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"How should I know? You saw it. It was big like the city of Manhattan and packed with towers, overgrown with towers, towers of pale azure and pink and gold, the most intricate and delicate of towers. You couldn't see all of it in those flashes. You couldn't see the flowers and the trees that lined the streets--."
Silence.
I didn't dare to say a word. But he was not continuing....
"Yes?" I asked. "What kinds of flowers?"
I felt a small convulsion in my neck.
Did that mean he was feeling pain?
"Yes, that's what it means, you imbecile," he said.
I remained quiet, waiting. Far down the hill, more and more of the tribe
were arriving. I would not rest until Viktor and Rose had returned. And they could not possibly reach the Chateau before sunrise. It was night in San Francisco, but five in the morning here. I prayed they had gone to New York as they'd promised. I couldn't bear to think of Rose and Viktor most of the time, out there, newly Born to Darkness, determined to roam the planet free of all guardians, Rose gone back to explore her old home and her school and find that devoted mortal bodyguard who'd once saved her life, and bring him over into the Blood if she and Viktor could manage it.
That had been Rose's only request: to offer the Dark Gift to her beloved Murray. And I had acquiesced though I gave all the predictable stodgy warnings of my generation in the Blood that it could spell disaster. Rose had vanished into our world leaving the mortal Murray bewildered and hurt that his precious charge, the college girl he'd guarded with such love, had simply abandoned him.
Of course I'd investigated Murray. He was a complex man, of deep feeling, a lover of things of the mind to which he'd made his way only through comic books, fantasy novels, and television, but a lover of the spiritual, and moral to the core of his being. He had been in awe of Rose's education and refinement; in awe of her ambition. Maybe it would work, this invitation to Murray.
How curious and human to be thinking of all of this at the same time.
"What is it you see right now, Amel?" I asked.
"That city," he answered. "Would you think me a boastful fool if I told you I--?" Silence again.
"If you only knew," I said, "how much I cherish every single word that comes from you, you wouldn't ask. Boast to me. You're allowed for all eternity to do that."
"I know that city," he said in a small wounded voice. "That city was--."
"Your home?"
Silence. Then:
"It's time," he said. "The Egyptian idiot and the Viking thug are making their way up the mountain."
"I know," I said. An idea was forming in my mind, of how I might draw him out further on the city, but the sun waits for no vampire. I wondered if Louis had gone into his crypt, the special crypt I'd prepared for him, a monkly chamber of essential things with an antique black coffin that I'd chosen specially, with its lining of thick white silk padding. Pretty much like mine.
"He sleeps," said Amel.
I smiled. "And did you look at me through his eyes when I was with him?"
"No, I can't go into him," he said. "I told you that. But I love looking at him through your eyes and I know what I see. He loves you so much more than he lets on. And others know that Louis loves you, and they see his love, and they're glad he's finally here."
That was more reassuring than I cared to admit.
And true, it was time, and there were my guardians off in the falling snow, sturdy as trees, waiting for me.
I rose slowly as if my bones ached when they did not, and walked towards them. And for some reason, unbeknownst to me in my present frame of mind, I put my arms out to receive Cyril and Thorne, embracing them, and we walked down the mountain together.
As I entered my crypt, I saw, in a flash, the city tumbling into the sea. I saw the smoke billowing up and up into the clouds and then making black clouds spreading out to block the sun.
"Doesn't seem possible," Amel whispered, "a city like that, to have died within an hour."
"And you died there," I said.
But he didn't answer me. A hideous wailing filled my ears, but so faint I had to hold my breath to hear it. A wailing in dreams, not from him or me. A wailing that speaks of grief without the need of language.
