The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2)

by Anne Rice

They invented Satan, didn’t they? Satanic is merely the name they give to the behavior of those who would disrupt the orderly way in which men want to live.” “I don’t see it.” “Well, use your preternatural brain, my blue-eyed one,” she answered, “my golden-haired son, my handsome wolfkiller. It is very possible that God made the world as Armand said.”

“It is petty to destroy anything merely for the sake of the destroying, don’t you think?” “You’re impossible,” she said. “Sometime in the far future there may be such a leader. He will reduce man to the nakedness and fear from which he came. And we shall feed upon him effortlessly as we have always done, and the Savage Garden, as you call it, will cover the world.” “I almost hope someone does attempt it,” I said. “Because I would rise up against him and do everything to defeat him. And possibly I could be saved, I could be good again in my own eyes, as I set out to save man from this.”

Akasha foreshadowing?!

“I was a good marksman when I was a young man,” I said, “a good actor on the stage. And now I am a good vampire. So much for our understanding of the word ‘good.’ ”

But there was a connection in my mind. Egypt, more than any other land the world over, was a place in love with death.

Blood like light itself, liquid fire. Our blood. And my arms gathering incalculable strength, winding round his shoulders, my face pressed to his cool white flesh, the blood shooting down into my loins and every vessel in my body ignited with it. How many centuries had purified this blood, distilled its power? It seemed beneath the roar of the flow he spoke. He said again: “Drink, my young one, my wounded one.” I felt his heart swell, his body undulate, and we were sealed against each other. I think I heard myself say: “Marius.” And he answered: “Yes.”

<3

“A singer can shatter a glass with the proper high note,” he said, “but the simplest way for anyone to break a glass is simply to drop it on the floor.”

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds—justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.

“Akasha,” I said aloud. I heard the name at the same moment of speaking it. And it sounded lovely to me.

“I want to continue,” I said. “Then you must go,” he said. “A century from now, maybe less, we’ll meet again. I won’t be on this island. I will have taken Those Who Must Be Kept to another place. But wherever I am and wherever you are, I’ll find you. And then I’ll be the one who will not want you to leave me. I’ll be the one who begs you to remain. I’ll fall in love with your company, your conversation, the mere sight of you, your stamina and your recklessness, and your lack of belief in anything—all the things about you I already love rather too strongly.”

“Well, for one thing,” he said, “your powers are extraordinary, but you can’t expect those you make in the next fifty years to equal you or Gabrielle. Your second child didn’t have half Gabrielle’s strength and later children will have even less. The blood I gave you will make some difference. If you drink … if you drink from Akasha and Enkil, which you may choose not to do … that will make some difference too. But no matter, only so many children can be made by one in a century. And new offspring will be weak. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. The rule of the old covens had wisdom in it that strength should come with time. And then again, there is the old truth: you might make titans or imbeciles, no one knows why or how.

YET IN LOVE, WE WILL TAKE YOU, AND IN RAPTURE, WE’LL BREAK YOU AND IN DEATH WE’LL RELEASE YOU NO ONE CAN SAY YOU WERE NOT WARNED.

CHILDREN OF DARKNESS MEET THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT CHILDREN OF MAN, FIGHT THE CHILDREN OF NIGHT