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 étude “Tristesse.”
Crossing Fifth Avenue, he moved towards the doors of the mansion, already playing with her, following her as he glided into the soft sweet unmistakably sad melody of the étude and racing with her into the more violent phrasing. He heard her hesitate and then her playing moved on, slowly again, and his violin sang with it, weaving high above her. The tears rolled down Antoine’s cheeks; he couldn’t stop them, though he knew they would be tinged with blood.
On and on he went with her, moving beneath her into the deepest and darkest notes he could make on the G string.
She stopped.
Silence. He thought he would collapse. In a blur he saw mortals gathered around him, watching him, and suddenly he brought down his bow, ripping away from the gentle caressing music of Chopin into the strong full melodies of Bartók’s Concerto for Violin, playing both orchestra lines and the violin lines in a torrent of wild, dissonant agonized notes.
He saw nothing suddenly, though he knew the crowd had thickened and no music answered him from the keyboard of Sybelle. But this was his heart, his song now, as he plunged deeper and deeper into the Bartók, his tempo speeding up, becoming almost inhuman, as on and on he went.
His soul sang with the music. It became his own melodies and glissandi as his thoughts sang with it.
Let me in, I beg you, let me in. Louis, let me in. Made by Lestat, never having had a chance to know you, never meant to harm you or Claudia, those long-ago times, forgive me, let me in. Benji, my guiding light, let me in. Benji, my consolation in unending darkness, let me in. Armand, I beg you, find a place in your heart for me, let me in.
But soon his words were lost, he was no longer thinking in words or syllables but only in the music, only in the throbbing notes. He was swaying wildly as he played. He no longer cared whether or not he looked or sounded human, and deep in his heart he was aware that if he were to die now, he would not revolt against it, not with any molecule of his being, because the death sentence would come upon him by his own hand and for what he truly was. This music was what he truly was.
Silence.
He had to wipe the blood from his eyes. He had to, and slowly, he reached for his handkerchief and then held it trembling, unable to see.
They were close. The mortal crowd meant nothing to him. He could hear that powerful heart, that ancient heart that had to be Armand’s heart. Cold preternatural flesh touched his flesh. Someone had taken the handkerchief from him, and this one was blotting his eyes for him, and wiping the thin streaks of blood from his face.
He opened his eyes.
It was Armand. Auburn hair, face of a boy, and the dark burning eyes of an immortal who’d roamed for half a millennium. Oh, this truly was the face of a seraph right off the ceiling of a church.
My life is in your hands.
On all sides of him, people were applauding, men and women clapping for his performance—just innocent people, people who didn’t know what he was. People who didn’t even notice these blood tears, this fatal giveaway. The night was bright with streetlamps, and rows and rows of yellow windows, and the daytime warmth was coming up from the pavements, and the tall tender saplings shed their very tiny leaves in a warm breeze.
“Come inside,” said Armand softly. He felt Armand’s arm around him. Such strength. “Don’t be afraid,” said Armand.
There stood the incandescent Sybelle smiling at him, and beside her the unmistakable Benji Mahmoud in a black fedora with his small hand extended.
“We’ll take care of you,” said Armand. “Come inside with us.”
8
Marius and the Flowers
FOR HOURS, he’d been painting furiously, his only light in the old ruined house an old-fashioned lantern.
But the lights of the city poured in the broken-out windows, and the great roar of the traffic on the boulevard was like the roar of a river, quieting him as he painted.
His left thumb hooked into an old-fashioned wooden palette, his pockets filled with tubes of acrylic paint, he used only one brush until it fell to pieces, covering the broken walls with brilliant pictures of the trees, the vines, the flowers he’d seen in Rio de Janeiro and the faces, yes, always the faces of the beautiful Brazilians he encountered everywhere, walking through the nighttime rain forest of Corcovado, or on the endless beaches of the city, or in the noisy garishly lighted nightclubs he frequented, collecting expressions, images, flashes of hair or shapely limbs as he might have collected pebbles from the frothy margin of the ocean.
All this he poured into his feverish painting, rushing as if at any moment the police would appear with the old tiresome admonitions. “Sir, you cannot paint in these abandoned buildings, we have told you.”
Why did he do it? Why was he so loath to interfere with the mortal world? Why didn’t he compete with those brilliant native painters who spread their murals out in the freeway underpasses and on crumbling favela walls?
Actually, he would be moving on to something much more challenging, yes, he had been giving it a lot of thought, wanting to move to some godforsaken desert place where he might paint on the rocks and the mountains confident that all would restore themselves in time as the inevitable rains would wash away all that he’d created. He wouldn’t be competing with human beings there, would he? He wouldn’t hurt anybody.