Anne Rice
 The Vampire Armand
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Jesus, speaking to Mary Magdalene:
  
  Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: 
  but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father,
   and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
  
  THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN 20:17
  
  PART 1
  BODY and BLOOD

  1

  THEY SAID a child had died in the attic. Her clothes had been discovered in the wall. I 
wanted to go up there, and to lie down near the wall, and be alone.
  
  They'd seen her ghost now and then, the child. But none of these vampires could see 
spirits, really, at least not the way that I could see them. No matter. It wasn't the 
company of the child I wanted. It was to be in that place.
  
  Nothing more could be gained from lingering near Lestat. I'd come. I'd fulfilled my 
purpose. I couldn't help him.
  
  The sight of his sharply focused and unchanging eyes unnerved me, and I was quiet 
inside and full of love for those nearest me-my human children, my dark-haired little 
Benji and my tender willowy Sybelle - but I was not strong enough just yet to take them 
away.
  
  I left the chapel.
  
  I didn't even take note of who was there. The whole convent was now the dwelling place 
of vampires. It was not an unruly place, or a neglected place, but I didn't notice who 
remained in the chapel when I left.
  
  Lestat lay as he had all along, on the marble floor of the chapel in front of the huge 
crucifix, on his side, his hands slack, the left hand just below the right hand, its 
fingers touching the marble lightly, as if with a purpose, when there was no purpose at 
all. The fingers of his right hand curled, making a little hollow in the palm where the 
light fell, and that too seemed to have a meaning, but there was no meaning.
  
  This was simply the preternatural body lying there without will or animation, no more 
purposeful than the face, its expression almost defiantly intelligent, given that months 
had passed in which Lestat had not moved.
  
  The high stained-glass windows were dutifully draped for him before sunrise. At night, 
they shone with all the wondrous candles scattered about the fine statues and relics 
which filled this once sanctified and holy place. Little mortal children had heard Mass 
under this high coved roof; a priest had sung out the Latin words from an altar.
  
  It was ours now. It belonged to him-Lestat, the man who lay motionless on the marble 
floor.
  
  Man. Vampire. Immortal. Child of Darkness. Any and all are excellent words for him.
  
  Looking over my shoulder at him, I never felt so much like a child.
  
  That's what I am. I fill out the definition, as if it were encoded in me perfectly, and 
there had never been any other genetic design.
  
  I was perhaps seventeen years old when Marius made me into a vampire. I had stopped 
growing by that time. For a year, I'd been five feet six inches. My hands are as delicate 
as those of a young woman, and I was beardless, as we used to say in that time, the years 
of the sixteenth century. Not a eunuch, no, not that, most certainly, but a boy.
  
  It was fashionable then for boys to be as beautiful as girls. Only now does it seem 
something worthwhile, and that's because I love the others-my own: Sybelle with her 
woman's breasts and long girlish limbs, and Benji with his round intense little Arab face.
  
  I stood at the foot of the stairs. No mirrors here, only the high brick walls stripped 
of their plaster, walls that were old only for America, darkened by the damp even inside 
the convent, all textures and elements here softened by the simmering summers of New 
Orleans and her clammy crawling winters, green winters I call them because the trees here 
are almost never bare.
  
  I was born in a place of eternal winter when one compares it to this place. No wonder 
in sunny Italy I forgot the beginnings altogether, and fashioned my life out of the 
present of my years with Marius. "I don't remember." It was a condition of loving so much 
vice, of being so addicted to Italian wine and sumptuous meals, and even the feel of the 
warm marble under my bare feet when the rooms of the palazzo were sinfully, wickedly 
heated by Marius's exorbitant fires.
  
  His mortal friends ... human beings like me at that time ... scolded constantly about 
these expenditures: firewood, oil, candles. And for Marius only the finest candles of 
beeswax were acceptable. Every fragrance was significant.
  
  Stop these thoughts. Memories can't hurt you now. You came here for a reason and now 
you have finished, and you must find those you love, your young mortals, Benji and 
Sybelle, and you must go on.
  
  Life was no longer a theatrical stage where Banquo's ghost came again and again to seat 
himself at the grim table.