“Give me back my arm and my hand, please,” said Rhoshamandes.

“I will when my son is restored to me,” I said.

To my astonishment, the sound of weeping came from the phone.

The Voice was quiet, but I could hear a low hiss that told me he was still here.

“Rhosh, are you there?” Benedict asked in a ragged aching tone.

“Yes, Benedict, I am. Are you watching her?”

“She’s just walking along the sand. She sees me. She knows where I am. She’s moving slowly towards me. Rhosh, this is horrible. Rhosh, talk to me.”

“I’m listening, Benedict,” said Rhosh wearily.

“She knows I’m the one who struck the fatal blow,” Benedict cried. “Rhosh, it’s all my fault. I kept thinking about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, because I got this flash from her when I was binding her up. This flash, that she was with her sister, and her sister Maharet was alive and sitting beside her there and staring at me, and that’s what I saw from her mind. And after you left, Rhosh, there was another one of those flashes from her, of the two of them together, and I knew she was awake down there, and I didn’t know what to do, and then Viktor, Viktor set the house on fire.”

We sat listening to this, all of us, without a word. Even the Voice was listening, I was sure of it. In the far corner, my beloved Rose was sitting against the wall, her knees drawn up, her fingers splayed in front of her eyes.

“He lit a fire in there, Rhosh. There were all these scented candles, matches, I didn’t think, I never thought. He set a bundle of towels on fire in the shower stall. He set a towel on fire under the door, the wooden door.…”

“I understand Benedict,” Rhosh said with a long sigh. His eyes were wearily fastened on his severed arm and hand.

“I went up there to put the fire out, and to try to make him stop it, to make him be patient. I told him no one was really going to hurt him! And then I heard sounds from the cellar. She was coming. I knew it. She was coming after me. I was talking to Viktor and she was there, Rhosh, in the door. I was terrified, Rhosh. Terrified and I couldn’t get that image out of my head of bringing that blade down to kill Maharet. She knew. She saw it. She knew. And I thought, She’s going to destroy me now, crush me with those white hands. But she just moved right past me and she went up to Viktor. She went to Viktor and, Rhosh, she started stroking his face and kissing him. And I ran.”

He broke down in sobs.

Rhosh raised his eyebrows in the most bitter ironical expression, and perhaps this was far more indicative of his true heart than that cavalier dismissive expression that kept competing with it as he continued to look at his severed parts.

“I have to go now,” said Benedict miserably. “They’re down there on the beach with her. They have Viktor. But where should I go?”

“Come here,” I said, “and collect your maker because as soon as my son is safe in my arms, I’ll give him back what I’ve taken from him.” I promised nothing else.

I stood up and turned and faced the others. I wondered how many of them wanted me to be their leader now. Well, I had given them a gruesome taste of what I was capable of, acts that were far more difficult to perform for anyone with a drop of humanity in him than simply blasting others away with invisible force or exterminating heat. I’d given them a really good taste of what sort of ruler I might be.

I expected a certain amount of contempt with an equal measure, I hoped, of grudging sympathy, but I saw nothing but simple expressions, eyes fixed on me as agreeably and even generously as ever. True, Sybelle was crying and Bianca was trying to comfort her, but I sensed no hostility from any of them.

Flavius was actually smiling at me. And Zenobia and Avicus were entirely calm. Pandora seemed lost in her own thoughts, and Arjun merely gazed at me with obvious admiration.

Gregory had a subtle smile on his face. And Armand’s expression was very nearly the same. There was even the faintest smile on Louis’s face, and that amazed me, though there was some other element in it, which I couldn’t define. Notker was gazing at me with an open, affable expression, and Sevraine was looking coldly at Rhoshamandes without the slightest apparent emotion, while Eleni was looking up with frank admiration and Eugénie merely watched without obvious concern.

Armand stood up, his eyes as innocent and submissive as they always appeared.

“They’ll be coming into the back garden,” he said. “Let me show you the way.”

“I think you should destroy this one,” said Benji with a serious frown as he looked at Rhoshamandes. “He cares nothing about any of us. He cares only for his Benedict and himself.”

Rhoshamandes showed no sign that this surprised him or even that he’d heard.

“Lestat,” said Benji. “You are our prince now. Destroy him.”

“He was tricked,” said Allesandra again softly.

“They killed the great Maharet,” said Notker under his breath. He gave a little shrug, one eyebrow raised eloquently. “They killed her. They took counsel from no one. They should have come to you, to the others here, to us.”

“Except the Voice bewitched them,” said Allesandra, “and the Voice lies and the Voice is treacherous.”

I could hear the Voice snickering and murmuring and then he cried out, startling me, positively screaming in my head, exploding all rational thought, but I quickly regained my poise. “Destroy him,” said the Voice. “He bungled everything.”

I almost laughed out loud, but pressed my lips together in a bitter smile.

But Rhoshamandes knew what the Voice had just said to me. Rhoshamandes had picked it up from my mind.

He looked at me, but nothing changed in his calm face, and then slowly he looked away.

“I gave my word,” I said to Benji. “When Viktor comes, we’ll give him back these fragments. I can’t break my word.”

I went round the table and towards Rose.

She lay pale and shuddering against the satin pillows. I collected her in my arms and carried her out of the ballroom behind Armand.

25

Lestat

The Garden of Love

IT WAS a vast space, walled in brick, and lined with young oak trees rising some three stories with bright green leaves. There were banks of flowers, and pathways winding through patches of flowers, and all of this artfully lighted with electric bulbs concealed at the roots of the trees and the shrubbery, and little Japanese stone lanterns here and there on patches of grass with flickering flames.