Pandora (32 page)

“We thought you would be in Rome,” said the young man. He had short black hair, and very round innocent eyes. “Because the Christian Bishop of Rome is now supreme among Christians and the theology of Antioch is no longer of great matter.”

“Why would we be in Rome?” asked Marius. “What is the Roman Bishop to us?”

The woman took the fore. Her hair was severely parted in the middle but her face was very regal and regular. She had in particular beautifully defined lips.

“Why do you hide from us? We have heard of you for years! We know that you know things—about us and where the Dark Gift came from, that you know how God put it into the world, and that you saved our kind from extinction.”

Marius was plainly horrified, but gave little sign of it.

“I have nothing to tell you,” he said, perhaps too hastily. “Except I do not believe in your God or your Christ and I do not believe God put the Dark Gift, as you call it, into the world. You have made a terrible mistake.”

They were highly skeptical and utterly dedicated.

“You have almost reached salvation,” said another, the boy at the far end of the line, whose hair was unshorn and hung to his shoulders. He had a manly voice, but his limbs were small. “You have almost reached the point where you are so strong and white and pure that you need not drink!”

“Would that that were true, it’s not,” said Marius.

“Why don’t you welcome us?” asked the boy. “Why don’t you guide us and teach us that we may better spread the Dark Blood, and punish mortals for their sins! We are pure of heart. We were chosen. Each of us went into the cave bravely and there the dying devil, a crushed creature of blood and bone, cast out of Heaven in a blaze of fire, passed on to us his teachings.”

“Which were what?” asked Marius.

“Make them suffer,” the woman said. “Bring death. Eschew all things of the world, as do the Stoics and the hermits of Egypt, but bring death. Punish them.”

The woman had become hostile. “This man won’t help us,” she said under her breath. “This man is profane. This man is a heretic.”

“But you must receive us,” said the young man who had spoken first. “We have searched so long and so far, and we come to you in humility. If you wish to live in a palace, then perhaps that is your right, you have earned it, but we have not. We live in darkness, we enjoy no pleasure but the blood, we feast on the weak and the diseased and the innocent alike. We do
the will of Christ as the Serpent did the will of God in Eden when he tempted Eve.”

“Come to our Temple,” said one of the others, “and see the tree of life with the sacred Serpent wound around it. We have his fangs. We have his power. God made him, just as God made Judas Iscariot, or Cain, or the evil Emperors of Rome.”

“Ah,” I said, “I see. Before you happened on the god in the cave, you were worshipers of the snake. You’re Ophites, Sethians, Nassenians.”

“That was our first calling,” said the boy. “But now we are of the Children of Darkness, committed to sacrifice and killing, dedicated to inflicting suffering.”

“Oh, Marcion and Valentinus,” Marius whispered. “You don’t know the names, do you? They’re the poetic Gnostics who invented the morass of your philosophy a hundred years ago. Duality—that, in a Christian world, evil could be as powerful as good.”

“Yes, we know this.” Several spoke at once. “We don’t know those profane names. But we know the Serpent and what God wants of us.”

“Moses lifted the Serpent in the desert, up over his head,” said the boy. “Even the Queen of Egypt knew the Serpent and wore him in her crown.”

“The story of the great Leviathan has been eradicated in Rome,” said the woman. “They took it out of the sacred books. But we know it!”

“So you learned all this from Armenian Christians,” said Marius. “Or was it Syrians.”

A man, short of stature, with gray eyes, had not
spoken all this while, but he stepped forward now and addressed Marius with considerable authority.

“You hold ancient truths,” he said, “and you use them profanely. All know of you. The blond Children of Darkness in the Northern woods know of you, and that you stole some important secret out of Egypt before the Birth of Christ. Many have come here, glimpsed you and the woman, and gone away in fear.”

“Very wise,” said Marius.

“What did you find in Egypt?” asked the woman. “Christian monks live now in those old rooms that once belonged to a race of blood drinkers. The monks don’t know about us, but we know all about them and you. There was writing there, there were secrets, there was something that by Divine Will belongs now in our hands.”

“No, there was nothing,” said Marius.

The woman spoke up again, “When the Hebrews left Egypt, when Moses parted the Red Sea, did the Hebrews leave something behind? Why did Moses raise the snake in the desert? Do you know how many we are? Nearly a hundred. We travel to the far North, to the South, and even to the East to lands you would not believe.”

I could see Marius was distraught.

“Very well,” I said, “we understand what you want and why you have been led to believe that we can satisfy you. I ask you, please, to go out in the Garden and let us speak. Respect our house. Don’t harm our slaves.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it.”

“And we’ll be back shortly.”

I snatched Marius’s hand and pulled him down the stairs.

“Where are you going?” he whispered. “Block all images from your mind! They must glimpse nothing.”

“They won’t glimpse,” I said, “and from where I will stand as I talk to you, they won’t hear either.”

He seemed to catch my meaning. I led him into the sanctuary of the unchanged Mother and Father, dosing the stone doors behind me.

I drew Marius behind the seated King and Queen.

“They can probably hear the hearts of the Pair,” I whispered in the softest manner audible. “But maybe they won’t hear us over that sound. Now, we have to kill them, destroy them completely.”

Marius was amazed.

“Look, you know we have to do this!” I said. “You have to kill them and anybody like them who ever comes near us. Why are you so shocked? Get ready. The simplest way is cut them to pieces first, and then burn them.”

“Oh, Pandora,” he sighed.

“Marius, why do you cringe?”

“I don’t cringe, Pandora,” he said. “I see myself irrevocably changed by such an act. To kill when I thirst, to keep to myself and keep these here who must be kept by somebody, that I have done for so long. But to become an executioner? To become like the Emperors burning Christians! To commence a
war against this race, this order, this cult, whatever it is, to take such a stand.”

“No choice, come on. There are many decorative swords in the room where we sleep. We should take the big curved swords. And the torch. We should go to them and tell them how sorry we are for what we must impart to them, then do it!”

He didn’t answer.

“Marius, are you going to let them go so that others will come after us? The only security lies in destroying every blood drinker who ever discovers us and the King and Queen.”

He walked away from me and stood before the Mother. He looked into her eyes. I knew that he was silently talking to her. And I knew that she was not answering.

“There is one other possibility,” I said, “and it’s quite real.” I beckoned for him to come back, behind them, where I felt safest to plot.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Give the King and the Queen over to them. And you and I are free. They will care for the King and Queen with religious fervor! Maybe the King and Queen will even allow them to drink—”

“That’s unspeakable!” he said.

“Exactly my feelings. We shall never know if we are safe. And they shall run rampant through the world like supernatural rodents. So do you have a third plan?”

“No, but I’m ready. We use the fire and the swords
together. Can you tell the lies that will charm them as we approach, armed and carrying torches?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” I said.

We went into the chamber and took up the big curved swords that were keenly sharp and came from the desert world of the Arabs. We lighted another torch from that at the foot of the stairs and we went up together.

“Come to me, Children,” I said as I entered the room, loudly, “come, for what I have to reveal requires the light of this torch, and you will soon know the sacred purpose of this sword. How devout you are.”

We stood before them.

“How young you are!” I said.

Suddenly, the panic swept them together. They made it so simple for us by clustering in this manner that we had the task done in moments, lighting their garments, hacking their limbs, ignoring their piteous cries.

Never had I used my full strength and speed, never my full will, as I did against them. It was exhilarating to slash them, to force the torch upon them, to slash them until they fell, until they lost all life. Also, I did not want them to suffer.

Because they were so young, so very young as blood drinkers, it took quite some time to burn the bones, to see that all was ashes.

But it was finally done, and we stood together—Marius and I—in the garden, our garments smeared
with soot, staring down at blowing grass, making certain with our eyes that the ashes were blown in all directions.

Marius turned suddenly and walked fast away from me, and down the stairs and into the Mother’s Sanctuary.

I rushed after him in panic. He stood holding the torch and the bloody sword—oh, how they had bled—and he looked into Akasha’s eyes.

“Oh, loveless Mother!” he whispered. His face was soiled with blood and grime. He looked at the flaming torch and looked up at the Queen.

Akasha and Enkil showed no sign of any knowledge of the massacre above. They showed neither approval, nor gratitude, nor any form of consciousness. They showed no awareness of the torch in his hand, or his thoughts, whatever they might be.

It was a finish for Marius, a finish to the Marius I had known and loved at that time.

He chose not to leave Antioch. I was for getting away and taking them away, for wild adventures, and seeing the wonders of the world.

But he said no. He had but one obligation. And that was to lay in wait for others until he had killed every one of them.

For weeks he wouldn’t speak or move, unless I shook him and then he pleaded with me to leave him alone. He rose from the grave only to sit with the sword and the torch waiting.

It became unbearable to me. Months passed. I
said, “You are going mad. We should take them away!”

Then one night, very angry and alone, I cried out foolishly, “I would I were free of them and you!” And leaving the house, I did not return for three nights.

I slept in dark safe places I made for myself with ease. Every time I thought of him, I thought of his sitting motionless there, so very like them, and I was afraid.

If only he did know true despair; if only he had confronted what we now call “the absurd.” If only he had faced the nothingness! Then this massacre would not have demoralized him.

Finally one morning just before sunrise, when I was safely hidden, a strange silence fell over Antioch. A rhythm I had heard there all my days was gone. I was trying to think, What could this mean? But there was time to find out.

I had made a fatal miscalculation. The villa was empty. He had arranged for the transport by day. I had no clue as to where he had gone! Everything belonging to him had been taken, and all that I possessed scrupulously left behind.

I had failed him when he most needed me. I walked in circles around the empty Shrine. I screamed and let the cry echo off the walls.

He never returned to Antioch. No letter ever came.

After six months or more, I gave up and left.

Of course you know the dedicated, religious Christian vampires never died out, not until Lestat
came dressed in red velvet and fur to dazzle them and make a mockery of their beliefs. That was in the Age of Reason. That is when Marius received Lestat. Who knows what other vampire cults exist?

As for me, I had lost Marius again by then.

I had seen him for only a single precious night one hundred years earlier, and of course thousands of years after the collapse of what we call “the ancient world.”

I saw him! It was in the fancy fragile times of Louis XIV, the Sun King. We were at a court ball in Dresden. Music played—the tentative blend of clavichord, lute, violin—making the artful dances which seemed no more than bows and circles.

Across a room, I suddenly saw Marius!

He had been looking at me for a great while, and gave me now the most tragic and loving smile. He wore a big full-bottomed curly wig, dyed to the very color of his true hair, and a flared velvet coat, and layers of lace, so favored by the French. His skin was golden. That meant fire. I knew suddenly he had suffered something terrible. A jubilant love filled his blue eyes, and without forsaking his casual posture—he was leaning his elbow on the edge of the clavichord—he blew a kiss to me with his fingers.

I truly could not trust my eyes. Was he really there? Was I, myself, sitting here, in boned and low-necked bodice, and these huge skirts, one pulled back in artful folds to reveal the other? My skin in this age seemed an artificial contrivance. My hair
had been professionally gathered and lifted into an ornate shape.

I had paid no mind to the mortal hands which had so bound me. During this age I let myself be led through the world by a fierce Asian vampire, about whom I cared nothing. I had fallen into an ever existing trap for a woman: I had become the noncommittal and ostentatious ornament of a male personality who for all his tiresome verbal cruelty possessed sufficient force to carry us both through time.

The Asian was off slowly taking his carefully chosen victim in a bedroom above.

Marius came towards me and kissed me and took me in his arms. I shut my eyes. “This is Marius!” I whispered “Truly Marius.”

“Pandora!” he said drawing back to look at me. “My Pandora!”

His skin had been burned. Faint scars. But it was almost healed.

He led me out on the dance floor! He was the perfect impersonation of a human being. He guided me in the steps of the dance. I could scarce breathe. Following his lead shocked at each new artful turn by the rapture of his face, I could not measure centuries or even millennia. I wanted suddenly to know everything—where he had been, what had befallen him. Pride and shame in me held no sway. Could he see that I was no more than a ghost of the woman he’d known? “You are the hope of my soul!” I whispered.