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.
Seemed for the last twenty years of his life, his motto had been the same as many a doctor had taken in this world: “First, do no harm.”
The problem with retiring to a desert place was that Daniel would hate it. And keeping Daniel happy was the second rule of his life, as his own sense of well-being, his own capacity to open his eyes each evening with some desire to actually rise from the dead and celebrate the gift of life, was connected to and sustained by making Daniel happy.
And Daniel was certainly happy now in Rio de Janeiro. Tonight Daniel was hunting in the old Leda section of Rio, feasting slowly and stealthily among the dancing, singing, partying crowds, drunk no doubt on music as well as on blood. Ah, the young ones with their insatiable thirst.
But Daniel was a disciplined hunter, master of the Little Drink in a crowd, and a slayer of the evildoer only. Marius was certain of that.
It had been months since Marius had touched human flesh, months since he’d lowered his lips to that heated elixir, months since he’d felt the fragile yet indomitable pulse of some living thing struggling consciously or unconsciously against his remorseless hunger. It had been a heavy, powerful Brazilian man whom he stalked into the darkened woods of Corcovado, flushing him deeper and deeper into the rain forest and then dragging him from his hiding place for a long slow repast.
When had it happened that arterial blood was not enough, and he must rip out the heart and suck it dry also? When had it started that he had to lick the most vicious wounds for the little juice they would yield? He could exist without this, yet he couldn’t resist it, and so he sought—or so he told himself—to make the very most of it when he feasted. There had been but a mangled mess of remains to bury afterwards. But he’d kept a trophy, as he so often did—not just the thousands in American dollars in drug money that the victim had been carrying, but a fine gold Patek Philippe watch. Why had he done that? Well, it seemed pointless to bury such an artifact, but timepieces had of late begun to fascinate him. He had become faintly superstitious about them and knew it. These were remarkable times, and timepieces themselves reflected this in intricate and beautiful ways.
Let it be for now. No hunting. No hunting needed. And the watch was secure on his left wrist, a surprising ornament for him, but so what?
He closed his eyes and listened. Out of his hearing the traffic of the boulevard died away, and the voices of Rio de Janeiro rose as if the sprawling metropolis of eleven million souls were the most magnificent choir ever assembled.
Daniel.
Quickly, he locked in on his companion: the tall thin boyish young man with the violet eyes and the ashen hair whom Lestat had so aptly called “the Devil’s Minion.” It was Daniel who had interviewed the vampire who was Louis de Pointe du Lac, thereby giving birth unwittingly and innocently enough decades ago to the collection of books known as the Vampire Chronicles. It was Daniel who’d captured the damaged heart of the Vampire Armand and been brought over by him into Darkness. It was Daniel who had languished for many a year—shocked, deranged, lost, unable to care for himself—in Marius’s care until only a couple of years ago when his sanity, ambition, and dreams had been restored to him.
And there he was, Daniel, in his tight white short-sleeved polo shirt and dungarees, dancing wildly and beautifully with two shapely chocolate-skinned women under the red lights of a small club, the floor around them so packed that the crowd itself appeared to be one writhing organism.
Very well. All is well. Daniel is smiling. Daniel is happy.
Earlier that evening, Daniel and Marius had been to the Teatro Municipal for a performance of the London Ballet, and Daniel had pleaded in appealing gentlemanly fashion for Marius to join him as he haunted the nightclubs. But Marius couldn’t bring himself to give in to that request.
“You know what I have to do,” he’d said, heading for the old pastel-blue ruined house he’d chosen for his present work. “And you stay away from the clubs the blood drinkers frequent. You promise me!”
No wars with those little fiends. Rio is vast. Rio is surely the greatest hunting ground in the world with its teeming masses, and its high star-spangled skies, its ocean breezes, its great drowsy green trees, its endless pulse from sunset to sunrise.
“At the slightest sign of trouble, you come back to me.”
But what if there really were trouble?
What if there were?
Was Benji Mahmoud, broadcasting out of New York, right about the coven house in Tokyo having been deliberately burnt to the ground, and all those fleeing from it burnt in their tracks? When a “vampire refuge” in Beijing had burned the next night, Benji had said, “Is this a new Burning? Will this Burning be as fearful as the last? Who is behind this horror?”
Benji hadn’t been born when the last Burning happened. No, and Marius was not convinced that this was indeed another Burning. Yes, coven houses in India were being destroyed. But all too likely it was simply war amongst the scum, of which Marius had seen enough in his long life to know that such battles were inevitable. Or some ancient one, sick of the intrigues and skirmishes of the young, had stepped forth to annihilate those who had offended him.
Yet Marius had told Daniel tonight, “Stay away from that coven house in Santa Teresa.” He sent the message telepathically now to Daniel with all the force he could put behind it. “You see another blood drinker, you come back here!”
Was there a response? A faint whisper?
He wasn’t sure.
He stood still, the palette in his left hand, the brush lifted in his right, and the strangest most unexpected idea came over him.
What if he himself went to the coven house and burnt them out? He knew where it was. He knew there were twenty young blood drinkers who called it a safe haven. What if he were to go now, and wait until the early hours came, when they’d be returning home, slinking back to their filthy makeshift graves beneath the foundations, and then burn them out, down to the last one, slamming the rafters with the Fire Gift until the structure and its inhabitants were no more?
He could see it as if he were doing it! He could all but feel the Fire Gift concentrating behind his forehead, all but feel that lovely burst of strength when the telekinetic force leapt out like the tongue of a serpent!
Flames and flames. How gorgeous were these flames, dancing against his imagination as if in cinematic slow motion, rolling, expanding, rollicking upwards.
But this was not something he wanted to do. This was not something he had ever in all his long existence wanted to do—destroy his own kind for the sheer pleasure of it.
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.
Beyond the banks of fresh and fragrant flowers in the lamp-lit shrine sat the immovable pair: Akasha and Enkil.
And around Marius there formed the gardens he had created for their walls, resplendent with lilies and roses and the twining of green vines.
The twining of vines.
“Come inside,” said Daniel gently, coaxingly. “It’s early. If you don’t want to go out again, there’s a film I want you to see tonight. Come on, let’s go in.”
Marius wanted to say yes, of course. He wanted to move. But he stood still at the railing staring out, this time trying to find the stars beyond the veil of the clouds. The flowers.
Another voice was talking from the laptop on the coffee table behind him, a young female blood drinker somewhere in the world pleading for reassurance over the wires or airwaves as she poured out her heart. “And they say it happened in Iran, a refuge there up in smoke, and nobody survived, nobody.”
“But then how do we know?” asked Benji Mahmoud.
“Because they found it like that the next night and all the others were gone, dead, burned. Benji, what can we do? Where are the old ones? Are they the ones doing this to us?”