hating me, from the other side of the grave. I dragged him free of the cage and brought him down to the dirt floor. He was feverish, and though I ignored and would have concealed it if I could, he shoved at me and cursed me under his breath.
The old queen watched in fascination. I glanced at Gabrielle, who watched without a particle of fear. I drew out the pearl rosary from my waistcoat and letting the crucifix dangle, I placed the rosary around Nicolas's neck. He stared stuporously down at the little cross, and then he began to laugh. The contempt, the malice, came out of him in this low metallic sound. It was the very opposite of the sounds made by the vampires. You could hear the human blood in it, the human thickness of it, echoing against the walls. Ruddy and hot and strangely unfinished he seemed suddenly, the only mortal among us, like a child thrown among porcelain dolls.
The coven was more confused than ever. The two burntout torches still lay untouched.
"Now, by your own rules, you cannot harm him," I said. "Yet it's a vampire who has given him the supernatural protection. Tell me, how to compass that?"
I carried Nicki forward. And Gabrielle at once reached out to take him in her arms.
He accepted this, though he stared at her as if he didn't know her and even lifted his fingers to touch her face. She took his hand away as she might the hand of a baby, and kept her eyes fixed on the leader and on me.
"If your leader has no words for you now, I have words,"
I said. "Go wash yourselves in the waters of the Seine, and clothe yourselves like humans if you can remember how, and prowl among men as you are obviously meant to do."
The defeated boy vampire stumbled back into the circle, pushing roughly away those who had helped him to his feet.
"Armand," he implored the silent auburn-haired leader. "Bring the coven to order! Armand! Save us now!"
"Why in the name of hell," I outshouted him, "did the devil give you beauty, agility, eyes to see visions, minds to cast spells?"
Their eyes were fixed on me, all of them. The gray-haired boy cried out the name "Armand" again, but in vain.
"You waste your gifts!" I said. "And worse, you waste your immortality! Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past."
Perfect silence reigned. I could hear Nicki's slow breathing. I could feel his warmth. I could feel his numbed fascination struggling against death itself.
"Have you no cunning?" I asked the others, my-voice swelling in the stillness. "Have you no craft? How did I, an orphan, stumble upon so much possibility, when you, nurtured as you are by these evil parents," I broke off to stare at the leader and the furious boy, "grope like blind things under the earth?"
"The power of Satan will blast you into hell," the boy bellowed, gathering all his remaining strength.
"You keep saying that!" I said. "And it keeps not happening, as we can all see!"
Loud murmurs of assent!
"And if you really thought it would happen," I said, "you would never have bothered to bring me here."
Louder voices in agreement.
I looked at the small forlorn figure of the leader. And all eyes turned away from me to him. Even the mad queen vampire looked at him.
And in the stillness I heard him whisper:
"It is finished."
Not even the tormented ones in the wall made a sound.
And the leader spoke again:
"Go now, all of you, it is at an end."
"Armand, no!" the boy pleaded.
But the others were backing away, faces concealed behind hands as they whispered. The drums were cast aside, the single torch was hung upon the wall.
I watched the leader. I knew his words weren't meant to release us.
And after he had silently driven out the protesting boy with the others, so that only the queen remained with him, he turned his gaze once again to me.
Part IV The Children Of Darkness Chapter 3
3
The great empty room beneath its immense dome, with only the two vampires watching us, seemed all the more ghastly, the one torch giving a feeble and gloomy light.
Silently I considered: Will the others leave the cemetery, or hover at the top of the stairs? Will any of them allow me to take Nicki alive from this place? The boy will remain near, but the