Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,65
tell me that I’ll never see you again. Don’t think I can bear that along with everything else that’s happened. I have no one here, and then who comes but one who left such a stamp on my girlish heart that the details are as deep as the finest coin. And you say you will never see me again, that I must go.”
I turned around.
It was lust shining in his eyes. Yet he checked it. In a soft voice, he confessed with a little smile:
“Oh, how I admired your work with the Legate. I thought the two of you would plan out the whole conquest of the Germanic tribes on your own.” He sighed. “You must find a good life, a rich life, a life where your soul and body are fed.” The color flared in his face. He looked at me, at my breasts, at my hips and then at my face. Ashamed and trying to conceal it. Lust.
“Are you a man still?” I asked.
He didn’t answer me. But his expression grew chilly.
“You will never know the full extent of what I am!” he said.
“Ah, but not a man!” I said. “Am I right? Not a man.”
“Pandora, you are deliberately taunting me. Why? Why do this?”
“This transformation, this induction into the blood drinkers; it’s added no inches to your height. Did it add any inches anywhere else?”
“Please stop this,” he said.
“Want me, Marius. Say that you do. I see it. Confirm it in words. What does that cost you?”
“You are infuriating!” he said. His face colored deeply with his rage, and pressed his lips together so hard that they went white. “Thank the gods that I don’t want you! Not enough to betray love for brief and bloody ecstasy.”
“The Temple people, they don’t really know what you are, do they?”
“No!” he said.
“And you will not lay open your heart to me.”
“Never. You will forget me and these dreams will fade. I wager I can make them fade, myself, through prayer for you. I will do it.”
“That’s a pious tack,” I said. “What grants you such favor with the ancient Isis, who drank blood and was the Fount?”
“Don’t say those words; it’s all lies, all of it. You do not know that this Queen you saw was Isis. What did you learn in these nightmares? Think. You learned that this Queen was the prisoner of those who drank blood and she condemned them! They were evil. Think. Go back into the dream. Think You thought them evil, evil then, and you think them evil now. In the Temple, you caught the scent of evil. I know you did. I watched you.”
“Yes. But you’re not evil, Marius, you can’t convince me of this! You have a body like marble, you’re a blood drinker, but like a god, but not evil!”
He was about to protest when he stopped again. He looked out of the corner of his eye. And then slowly turned his head and let his gaze drift up through the roof of the peristyle.
“Is it the dawn coming,” I asked, “the rays of Amon Ra?”
“You are the most maddening human being I’ve ever known!” he said. “If I had married you, you would have put me in an early grave. I would have been spared all of this!”
“All of what?”
He called out for Flavius, who had been close all the while, listening to everything.
“Flavius, I’m leaving now,” he said. “I must. But guard her. When night falls, I’ll be here again, as quickly as I can. Should anything precede me, any badly scarred and frightening assailant, go for its head with your sword. The head, remember? And of course your Mistress here will no doubt be quite able to lend a hand in defending herself.”
“Yes, sir. Must we leave Antioch?”
“Watch your words, my faithful Greek,” I said. “I am Mistress here. We are not leaving Antioch.”
“Try to persuade her to prepare,” said Marius.
He looked at me.
A long silence fell between us. I knew he read my thoughts. Then a shudder of the blood dreams passed over me. I saw his eyes brighten. Something quickened in his expression. I shook off the dream, filled with terror. I am no hostess to terror.
“It’s all interwound,” I murmured, “the dreams, the Temple, you being there, their calling on you for help. What are you, some white god put on Earth to hunt the dark blood drinkers? Does the Queen live?”
“Oh, I wish I were such a god!” he said. “I would be if