The Queen of the Damned Read Online Free Page B

Athens—when piles of human waste fed the flies wherever you looked, and the air reeked of inevitable disease and hunger. No, he liked the clean pastel-colored cities of California well enough. He could have lingered forever among their clear-eyed and purposeful inhabitants.
    But he must go home. The concert was not for many nights, and he would see Lestat then, if he chose. . . . How delicious not to know precisely what he might do, any more than others knew, others who didn’t even believe in him!
    He crossed Castro Street and went swiftly up the wide pavement ofMarket. The wind had slackened; the air was almost warm. He took up a brisk pace, even whistling to himself the way that Louis often did. He felt good. Human. Then he stopped before the store that sold television sets and radios. Lestat was singing on each and every screen, both large and small.
    He laughed under his breath at the great concert of gesture and movement. The sound was off, buried in tiny glowing seeds within the equipment. He’d have to search to receive it. But wasn’t there a charm in merely watching the antics of the yellow-haired brat prince in merciless silence?
    The camera drew back to render the full figure of Lestat who played a violin as if in a void. A starry darkness now and then enclosed him. Then quite suddenly a pair of doors were opened—it was the old shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept, quite exactly! And there—Akasha and Enkil, or rather actors made up to play the part, white-skinned Egyptians with long black silken hair and glittering jewelry.
    Of course. Why hadn’t he guessed that Lestat would carry it to this vulgar and tantalizing extreme? He leant forward, listening for the transmission of the sound. He heard the voice of Lestat above the violin:
    Akasha! Enkil!

Keep your secrets

Keep your silence

It is a better gift than truth
.
    And now as the violin player closed his eyes and bore down on his music, Akasha slowly rose from the throne. The violin fell from Lestat’s hands as he saw her; like a dancer, she wrapped her arms around him, drew him to her, bent to take the blood from him, while pressing his teeth to her own throat.
    It was rather better than he had ever imagined—such clever craft. Now the figure of Enkil awakened, rising and walking like a mechanical doll. Forward he came to take back his Queen. Lestat was thrown down on the floor of the shrine. And there the film ended. The rescue by Marius was not part of it.
    “Ah, so I do not become a television celebrity,” he whispered with a faint smile. He went to the entrance of the darkened store.
    The young woman was waiting to let him in. She had the black plastic video cassette in her hand.
    “All twelve of them,” she said. Fine dark skin and large drowsy brown eyes. The band of silver around her wrist caught the light. He found it enticing. She took the money gratefully, without counting it. “They’ve been playing them on a dozen channels. I caught them all over, actually. Finished it yesterday afternoon.”
    “You’ve served me well,” he answered. “I thank you.” He produced another thick fold of bills.
    “No big thing,” she said. She didn’t want to take the extra money.
    You will
.
    She took it with a shrug and put it in her pocket.
    No big thing. He loved these eloquent modern expressions. He loved the sudden shift of her luscious breasts as she’d shrugged, and the lithe twist of her hips beneath the coarse denim clothes that made her seem all the more smooth and fragile. An incandescent flower. As she opened the door for him, he touched the soft nest of her brown hair. Quite unthinkable to feed upon one who has served you; one so innocent. He would not do this! Yet he turned her around, his gloved fingers slipping up through her hair to cradle her head:
    “The smallest kiss, my precious one.”
    Her eyes closed; his teeth pierced the artery instantly and his tongue lapped at the blood. Only a taste. A tiny flash of heat