Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,74

understand. I’ve come as close to him as possible for my protection.”

I lay back right in the hollow of the pillow where he lay. I took a long deep breath. “The breeze is like music here,” I whispered, “do you hear it?”

I slept the deep exhausted sleep which I had held off now for so many hours of both night and day.

Hours must have passed.

I woke with a start. The sky was purple. The slaves were curled up next to the couch, just beneath me, like terrified little animals.

I heard the noise again, the sound, distinct, a pulse. I thought oddly of something I used to like to do as a child. It was this: I would put my ear to my Father’s chest. And when I heard his heart, then I would kiss it. It had always made him happy.

I rose, realizing that I was not fully awake but certain this was no dream. I was in the beautiful villa of Marius in Antioch. The marble rooms opened one upon another.

I went to the last room, the room enclosed in stone. The doors were impossibly heavy. But suddenly, silently, they opened as if pushed from within.

I entered a massive chamber. Another pair of doors lay ahead of me. They too were made of stone. They had to lead to a stairwell, for the house ended just beyond.

These doors too suddenly opened, as if released by a spring! light from below.

A stairway went down from the threshold of the door. It was white marble, and newly made, with no wear of feet on it. So smooth, each slab, so clean.

A soft series of flames burned below, sending their antic shadows up the stairwell.

The sound now seemed louder. I dosed my eyes. Oh, that all the world were these polished chambers and all that exists could be explained within.

Suddenly, I heard a loud cry.

“Lady Pandora!”

I spun around.

“Pandora, he is over the wall!”

The boys came screaming through the house, echoing Flavius’s cry, “Lady Pandora!”

A great darkness gathered itself right before my eyes and then descended on me, throwing the helpless, beseeching boys to the side. I was almost pitched down the stairwell.

Then I realized I was in the grasp of the burnt thing. I looked down to see the black wrinkled arm, like old leather, that held me. Strong spices filled my nostrils. Fresh doming covered the hideously thin leg I saw, the dried-up foot.

“Boys, get the lamps, set it on fire!” I shouted. I fought desperately, driving us both back from the stairwell, but I couldn’t get loose from the creature. “Boys, the lamps downstairs!”

The boys clung to one another.

“I have you!” this creature said tenderly in my ear.

“No, you don’t!” I said, and gave him one fine blow with my right elbow. It drove him off balance. He nearly toppled. But he didn’t let me go. The whiteness of his tunic glowed in the shadows as he once more enclosed my arms, and rendered me almost helpless.

“Boys, downstairs, lamps full of oil!” I said. “Flavius!”

The creature hugged me as if he were a giant snake. I could scarce breathe.

“We can’t go downstairs!” one of the boys cried.

“We’re not allowed,” said the other.

The creature laughed in my ear, a rich deep laugh. “Not everyone is so bound to rebellion as you are, beautiful woman, outwitting your brother at the foot of the Temple steps.”

It was shocking to hear this clear articulate voice coming from a body which seemed burnt beyond all hope of life. I watched the blackened fingers moving over my own. I felt the touch of something cold on my neck. Then I felt the punctures. His fangs.

“Not!” I cried I thrashed back and forth in his grip, then threw all of my weight against him so that he almost toppled again but didn’t fall.

“Stop it, bitch, or I’ll kill you now.”

“Why don’t you?” I demanded.

I twisted to see his face. It was like that of a long-dead corpse dried in the desert, burnt black with a spine of a nose, and arched lips that seemed quite unable to dose over white teeth and the two fangs he bared now as he looked at me.

His eyes were full of blood as Marius’s eyes had been. His hair was a fine black mop very thick, fresh and clean, as though it had sprung from his body, renewing itself like magic.

“Yes,” he said confidently. “That is just what happened. And very soon I will have the blood I need to renew