Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,66

I could be! That no more blood drinkers will ever be made, of that I am certain. Let them lay flowers on an altar before a statue of basalt!”

I felt such love for him and rushed to him suddenly. “Take me with you now, wherever you are going.”

“I can’t!” he said. He blinked as though something hurt his eyes. He couldn’t fully lift his head.

“It’s the coming light, isn’t it? You are one of them.”

“Pandora, when I come to you, be ready to leave this place!” he said. And he vanished.

Like that, he vanished. Like that, he was gone from my arms and from my Irving room and from my house.

I turned away and walked slowly about the shadowy living room. I looked at the murals on the walls; the happy dancing figures with their laurels and their crowns of leaves—Bacchus and his nymphs, so modestly covered for such a riotous crew!

Flavius spoke. “Madam, a sword which I found among your possessions, may I have it in readiness?”

“Yes, and daggers galore, and fire, do not forget fire. It will run from fire.” I sighed. How did I know this? I did. So much for it. “But Flavius.” I turned around. “It won’t come until dark. There is only a small margin of the night left. We can both sleep as soon as we see the sky turn purple.” I lifted my hand to my forehead. “I am trying to remember . . . ”

“What, Madam?” Flavius said. He looked no less splendid after the spectacle of Marius, simply a man of different proportion but equally fine, and with warm human skin.

“Whether the dreams ever came by day. Was it always night? Oh, I am sleepy and they summon me. Flavius, put a light in my bath. But I’m going to bed. I am drowsy. Can you watch?”

“Yes, Madam.”

“Look, the stars have all but faded. What is it like to be one of them, Flavius, to be admired only in the darkness, when men and women live with candles and lamps. To be known and described, only in the heaviness of night, when all the business of day has ended!”

“You are truly the most resourceful woman I’ve ever known,” he said. “How you brought justice to the man who accused you.” He took my arm, and we moved towards the bedchamber where I had dressed that morning.

I loved him. An entire lifetime of crises could not have made it stronger.

“You will not sleep in the great bed of the house, in the dining room?”

“No,” I said. “That is for the display of marriage, and I will never know marriage again. I want to bathe, but I’m so sleepy.”

“I can wake the girls.”

“No, to the bed. You have a chamber proper?”

“Yes,” he led the way. It was still quite dark. I thought I heard a rustling noise. Realized it was nothing.

And there lay the bed with its small lamp, and on the bed so many pillows in the Oriental style, a soft soft nest into which I fell, like a Persian.

At once, the dream:

We blood drinkers stood in a vast Temple. It was meant to be dark. We could see this dark, as certain animals must see in the dark. We were all bronze-skinned, or tanned, or golden. We were all men.

On the floor lay the Queen screaming. Her skin was white. Pure white. Her long hair was black. Her crown bore the horns and the sun! The crown of Isis. She was the goddess! It took five blood drinkers on either side to hold her down. She thrashed her head from side to side, her eyes seeming to crackle with Divine Light.

“I am your Queen! You cannot do this to me!” How purely white she was, and her screams grew ever more desperate and imploring. “Great Osiris, save me from this! Save me from these blasphemers! Save me from the profane!”

The Priest beside me sneered at her.

The King sat motionless on the throne. But it was not to this King that she prayed. She prayed to an Osiris beyond.

“Hold her more tightly.”

Two more came to secure her ankles.

“Drink!” said the Priest to me. “Kneel down and drink from her blood. Her blood is more powerful than any blood that exists in the world. Drink.”

She cried softly.

“Monsters, demon children!” she sobbed.

“I won’t do it,” I said.

“Do it! You must have her blood!”

“No, not against her will. Not like this! She’s our Mother Isis!”

“She is our Fount and our prisoner.”

“No,” I said.

The Priest shoved me forward. I