He shook himself all over, wondering how in the world he had even thought of such a thing.
Ah, but you do want to do it.
“I do?” he asked. Again, he saw that old colonial house burning, that multistoried mansion in its gardens in Santa Teresa, white arches engulfed in flames, the young blood drinkers spinning in flame like whirling dervishes.
“No.” He spoke it aloud. “This is a repulsive ugly image.”
For one moment he stood stock-still. He listened with all his powers for the presence of another immortal, some unwelcome and intrusive being who might have drawn closer to him than he should ever have allowed.
He heard nothing.
But these alien thoughts had not originated with him, and a chill passed through him. What force outside himself was powerful enough to do this?
He heard faint laughter. It was close, like an invisible being whispering in his ear. Indeed it was inside his head.
What right has that trash to threaten you and your beloved Daniel? Burn them out; burn the house down around them; burn them as they escape.
He saw the flames again, saw the square tower of the old mansion engulfed, saw the adobe tiles of the roofs cascading into the flames and again the Blood Children running.…
“No,” he said quietly. He lifted the brush in a brave show of nonchalance and caught up a thick daub of Hooker’s green on the wall before him, shaping it almost mechanically into an explosion of leaves, ever more detailed leaves.…
Burn them. I tell you. Burn them before they burn the young one. Why are you not listening to me?
He continued to paint, as if he were being watched, determined to ignore this outrageous intrusion.
It grew louder suddenly, distinct, so loud it seemed to be not in his head but in this long shadowy room. “I tell you burn them!” It was almost a sobbing voice.
“And who are you?”
No answer. Simply the quiet suddenly of the old predictable noises. Rats scurrying about in this old house. The lantern giving off a low sputter. And that waterfall of traffic that never stopped, and a plane circling above.
“Daniel,” he said aloud. Daniel.
The noises of the night enveloped him suddenly, deafening him. He threw down the palette and took his iPhone from his coat pocket, quickly stabbing in Daniel’s number.
“Come home now,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”
He stood stranded in the room for a moment, looking at the long spread of color and figure that he had created in this anonymous and unimportant place. Then he snuffed out the lantern and left it behind.
In less than an hour, he walked into his penthouse suite at the Copacabana Hotel to find Daniel lying on the moss-green velvet couch, ankles crossed, head propped on the arm. The windows were open to the white balustraded veranda, and beyond sang the shining ocean.
The room was dark, illuminated only by the bright night sky over the beach and an open laptop computer on the polished coffee table from which the voice of Benji Mahmoud was holding forth on the sorrows of the Undead around the planet.
“What’s the matter?” Daniel said, at once getting to his feet.
For a moment, Marius couldn’t answer. He was staring at the bright, youthful, and sensitive face, at the appealing eyes, and the fresh young preternatural skin, and he could hear nothing but the beating of Daniel’s heart.
Slowly the voice of Benji Mahmoud penetrated. “… reports of young vampires immolated in Shanghai, and in Taiwan, in Delhi …”
Respectfully, patiently, Daniel waited.
Marius moved past him in silence and went through the open doors to the white railing and let the ocean breeze wash over him as he looked up at the pale and luminous Heavens. Below, the beach was white beyond the traffic moving on the avenue.
Burn them! How can you look at him and think of their hurting him? Burn them, I tell you. Destroy that house. Destroy them all. Hunt them down.…
“Stop it,” he whispered, his words lost in the breeze. “Tell me who you are.”
Low laughter rolling into silence. And then the Voice was against his ear again. “I would never hurt him or you, don’t you know that? But what are they to you but an offense? Were you not glad, secretly, when Akasha hunted them down in the streets and the back alleys and in the woods and in the swamps? Were you not exultant to have stepped forth on Mount Ararat above the world, unharmed, with your mighty friends?”
“You’re wasting my time,” said Marius, “if you don’t identify yourself.”
“In time, beautiful Marius,” said the Voice. “In time, and oh, I have always so loved the flowers.…”
Laughter.
The flowers. There flashed into his mind the flowers he’d painted tonight on the cracked and chipped wall of the abandoned house. But what could this mean? What could this conceivably mean?
Daniel was standing next to him.
“I don’t want you to leave me again,” Marius said under his breath, still staring out at the shining horizon. “Not just now, not tomorrow, not for I don’t know how many nights. I want you at my side. Do you hear me?”
“Very well,” Daniel said agreeably.
“I know I try your patience,” said Marius.
“And haven’t I tried yours?” asked Daniel. “Would I be here or anywhere if it wasn’t for you?”
“We’ll do things,” said Marius as though placating a restless spouse, a demanding spouse. “We’ll go out tomorrow; we’ll hunt together. There are films we should see, I don’t remember the names now, I can’t think—.”
“Tell me what’s the matter?”
From the living room came the voice of Benji Mahmoud. “Go to the website. See the images for yourselves. See the photographs being posted hourly. Death and death and death to our kind. I tell you it is a new Burning.”
“You don’t believe all that, do you?” Daniel asked.
Marius turned and slipped his arm around Daniel’s waist. “I don’t know,” he said frankly. But he managed a reassuring smile. Seldom had another blood drinker ever trusted in him so completely as this one, this one salvaged so easily and so selfishly from madness and disintegration.
“Whatever you say,” said Daniel.
I have always so loved the flowers.
“Yes, humor me for now,” said Marius. “Stay close … where …”
“I know. Where you can protect me.”
Marius nodded. Again he saw painted flowers, but not the flowers of tonight in this vast tropical city but flowers painted long ago on another wall, flowers of a green garden in which he’d walked in his dreams, right into the shimmering Eden that he had created. Flowers. Flowers shivering in their marble vases as if in some church or shrine … flowers.