queen of the damned_PARTI_02

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"They're the parents of all vampires, Baby Jenks, the Mother and the Father.
See, we're all an unbroken line of blood coming down from the King and the
Queen in ancient Egypt who are called Those Who Must Be Kept. And the reason
you gotta keep them is if you destroy them, you destroy all of us, too."
Sounded like a bunch of bull to her.
"Lestat's seen the Mother and the Father," Davis said. "Found them hidden on
a Greek island, so he knows that it's the truth. That's what he's been tell
ing everybody with these songs梐nd it's the truth."
"And the Mother and the Father don't move or speak or drink blood, Baby Jenk
s," Killer said. He looked real thoughtful, sad, almost. "They just sit ther
e and stare like they've done for thousands of years. Nobody knows what thos
e two know."
"Probably nothing," Baby Jenks had said disgustedly. "And I tell you, this i
s some kind of being immortal! What do you mean the big city Dead guys can k
ill us? Just how can they manage that?"
"Fire and sun can always do it," Killer answered just a touch impatient. "I
told you that. Now mind me, please. You can always fight the big city Dead g
uys. You're tough. Fact is, the big city Dead are as scared of you as you wi
ll ever be of them. You just beat it when you see a Dead guy you don't know.
That's a rule that's followed by everybody who's Dead."
After they'd left the coven house, she'd got another big surprise from Kille
r: he'd told her about the vampire bars. Big fancy places in New York and Sa
n Francisco and New Orleans, where the Dead guys met in the back rooms while
the damn fool human beings drank and danced up front. In there, no other De
ad guy could kill you, city slicker, European, or rogue like her.
"You run for one of those places," he told her, "if the big city Dead guys e
ver get on your case."
"I'm not old enough to go in a bar," Baby Jenks said.
That really did it. He and Davis laughed themselves sick. They were falling
off their motorcycles.
"You find a vampire bar, Baby Jenks," Killer said, "you just give them the E
vil Eye and say 'Let me in.'"
Yeah, she'd done that Evil Eye on people and made them do
THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED / 49
stuff, it worked OK. And truth was, they'd never seen the vampire bars. Just
heard about them. Didn't know where they were. She'd had lots of questions
when they finally left St. Louis.
But as she made her way north towards the same city now, the only thing in t
he world she cared about was getting to that same damned coven house. Big ci
ty Dead guys, here I come. She'd go clean out of her head if she had to go o
n alone.
The music in the earphones stopped. The tape had run out. She couldn't stand
the silence in the roar of the wind. The dream came back; she saw those twi
ns again, the soldiers coming. Jesus. If she didn't block it out, the whole
damn dream would replay itself like the tape.
Steadying the bike with one hand, she reached in her jacket to open the litt
le cassette player. She flipped the tape over. "Sing on, man!" she said, her
voice sounding shrill and tiny to her over the roar of the wind, if she hea
rd it at all.
Of Those Who Must Be Kept
What can we know?
Can any explanation save us?
Yes sir, that was the one she loved. That's the one she'd been listening to
when she fell asleep waiting for her mother to come home from work in Gun Ba
rrel City. It wasn't the words that got to her, it was the way he sang it, g
roaning like Bruce Springsteen into the mike and making it just break your h
eart.
It was kind of like a hymn in a way. It had that kind of sound, yet Lestat w
as right there in the middle of it, singing to her, and there was a steady d
rumbeat that went to her bones.
"OK, man, OK, you're the only goddamn Dead guy I've got now, Lestat, keep si
nging!"
Five minutes to St. Louis, and there she was thinking about her mother again
, how strange it had all been, how bad.
Baby Jenks hadn't even told Killer or Davis why she was going home, though t
hey knew, they understood.
Baby Jenks had to do it, she had to get her parents before the Fang Gang wen
t out west. And even now she didn't regret it. Except for that strange momen
t when her mother was dying there on the floor.
Now Baby Jenks had always hated her mother. She thought her mother was just
a real fool, making crosses every day of her life with little pink seashells
and bits of glass and then taking them
50 / ANNE RICE
to the Gun Barrel City Flea Market and selling them for ten dollars. And the
y were ugly, too, just real ready-made junk, those things with a little twis
ted-up Jesus in the middle made up of tiny red and blue beads and things.
But it wasn't just that, it was everything her mother had ever done that got
to Baby Jenks and made her disgusted. Going to church, that was bad enough,
but talking the way she did to people so sweet and just putting up with her
husband's drinking and always saying nice things about everybody.
Baby Jenks never bought a word of it. She used to lie there on her bunk in t
he trailer thinking to herself, What really makes that lady tick? When is sh
e going to blow up like a stick of dynamite? Or is she just too stupid? Her
mother had stopped looking Baby Jenks in the eye years ago. When Baby Jenks
was twelve she'd come in and said, "You know I done it, don't you? I hope to
God you don't think I'm no virgin." And her mother just faded out, like, ju
st looked away with her eyes wide and empty and stupid, and went back to her
work, humming like always as she made those seashell crosses.
One time some big city person told her mother that she made real folk art. "
They're making a fool of you," Baby Jenks had said. "Don't you know that? Th
ey didn't buy one of those ugly things, did they? You know what those things
look like to me? I'll tell you what they look like. They look like great bi
g dime-store earrings!"
No arguing. Just turning the other cheek. "You want some supper, honey?"
It was like an open and shut case, Baby Jenks figured. So she had headed out
of Dallas early, making Cedar Creek Lake in less than an hour, and there wa
s the familiar sign that meant her sweet little old home town:
WELCOME TO GUN BARREL CITY. WE SHOOT STRAIGHT WITH YOU.
She hid her Harley behind the trailer when she got there, nobody home, and l
ay down for a nap, Lestat singing in the earphones, and the steam iron ready
by her side. When her mother came in, slam bam, thank you, ma'am, she'd tak
e her out with it.
Then the dream happened. Why, she wasn't even asleep when it started. It was
like Lestat faded out, and the dream pulled her down and snap: ?
She was in a place full of sunlight. A clearing on the side of a
THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED / 51
mountain. And these two twins were there, beautiful women with soft wavy red
hair, and they knelt like angels in church with their hands folded. Lots of
people around, people in long robes, like people in the Bible. And there wa
s music, too, a creepy thumping and the sound of a horn playing, real mournf
ul. But the worst part was the dead body, the burned body of the woman on a
stone slab. Why, she looked like she'd been cooked, lying there! And on the
plates, there was a fat shiny heart and a brain. Yep, sure thing, that was a
heart and a brain.
Baby Jenks had woken up, scared. To hell with that. Her mother was standing
in the door. Baby Jenks jumped up and banged her with the steam iron till sh
e stopped moving. Really bashed in her head. And she should have been dead,
but she wasn't yet, and then that crazy moment came.
Her mother was lying there on the floor, half dead, staring, just like her d
addy would be later. And Baby Jenks was sitting in the chair, one blue jean
leg thrown over the arm, leaning on her elbow, or twirling one of her braids
, just waiting, thinking about the twins in the dream sort of, and the body
and the things on the plates, what was it all for? But mostly just waiting.
Die, you stupid bitch, go on, die, I'm not slamming you again!
Even now Baby Jenks wasn't sure what had happened. It was like her mother's
thoughts had changed, grown wider, bigger. Maybe she was floating up on the
ceiling somewhere the way Baby Jenks had been when she nearly died before Ki
ller saved her. But whatever was the cause, the thoughts were just amazing.
Just flat out amazing. Like her mother knew everything! All about good and b
ad and how important it was to love, really love, and how it was so much mor
e than just all the rules about don't drink, don't smoke, pray to Jesus. It
wasn't preacher stuff. It was just gigantic.
Her mother, lying there, had thought about how the lack of love in her daugh
ter, Baby Jenks, had been as awful as a bad gene that made Baby Jenks blind
and crippled. Yet it didn't matter. It was going to be all right. Baby Jenks
would rise out of what was going on now, just as she had almost done before
Killer had got to her, and there would be a finer understanding of everythi
ng. What the hell did that mean? Something about everything around us being
part of one big thing, the fibers in the carpet, the leaves outside the wind
ow, the water dripping in the sink, the clouds moving over Cedar Creek Lake,
and the bare trees, and they weren't really so ugly as Baby Jenks had thoug
ht. No, the whole
52 / ANNE RICE
thing was almost too beautiful to describe suddenly. And Baby Jenks' mother
had always known about this! Seen it that way. Baby Jenks's mother forgave B
aby Jenks everything. Poor Baby Jenks. She didn't know. She didn't know abou
t the green grass. Or the seashells shining in the light of the lamp.
Then Baby Jenks's mother had died. Thank God! Enough! But Baby Jenks had bee
n crying. Then she'd carried the body out of the trailer and buried it in ba
ck, real deep, feeling how good it was to be one of the Dead and so strong a
nd able to just heft those shovels full of dirt.
Then her father came home. This one's really for fun! She buried him while h
e was still alive. She'd never forget the look on his face when he came in t
he door and saw her with the fire ax. "Well, if it ain't Lizzie Borden."
Who the hell was Lizzie Borden?
Then the way his chin stuck out, and his fist came flying towards her, he wa
s so sure of himself! "You little slut!" She split his goddamn forehead in h
alf. Yeah, that part was great, feeling the skull cave?Go down, you bastard!
"梐nd so was shoveling dirt on his face while he was still looking at her. P
aralyzed, couldn't move, thinking he was a kid again on a farm or something
in New Mexico. Just baby talk. You son of a bitch, I always knew you had shi
t for brains. Now I can smell it!
But why the hell had she ever gone down there? Why had she left the Fang Gan
g?
If she'd never left them, she'd be with them now in San Francisco, with Kill
er and Davis, waiting to see Lestat on the stage. They might have even made
the vampire bar out there or something. Leastways, if they had ever gotten t
here. If something wasn't really really wrong.
And what the hell was she doing now backtracking? Maybe she should have gone
along out west. Two nights, that was all that was left.
Hell, maybe she'd rent a motel room when the concert happened, so she could
watch it on TV. But before that, she had to find some Dead guys in St. Louis
She couldn't go on alone.
How to find the Central West End. Where was it?
This boulevard looked familiar. She was cruising along, praying no meddling
cop would start after her. She'd outrun him of course, she always did, thoug
h she dreamed of getting just one of those damn sons-a-bitches on a lonely r
oad. But the fact was she didn't want to be chased out of St. Louis.
THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED / 53
Now this looked like something she knew. Yeah, this was the Central West End
or whatever they called it and she turned off now to the right and went dow
n an old street with those big cool leafy trees all around her. Made her thi
nk of her mother again, the green grass, the clouds. Little sob in her throa
t.
If she just wasn't so damn lonesome! But then she saw the gates, yeah, this
was the street. Killer had told her that Dead guys never really forget anyth
ing. Her brain would be like a little computer. Maybe it was true. These wer
e the gates all right, great big iron gates, opened wide and covered with da
rk green ivy. Guess they never really close up "a private place."
She slowed to a rumbling crawl, then cut the motor altogether. Too noisy in
this dark valley of mansions. Some bitch might call the cops. She had to get
off to walk her bike. Her legs weren't long enough to do it any other way.
But that was OK. She liked walking in these deep dead leaves. She liked this
whole quiet street.
Boy, if I was a big city vampire I'd live here too, she thought, and then fa
r off down the street, she saw the coven house, saw the brick walls and the
white Moorish arches. Her heart was really going!
Burnt up!
At first she didn't believe it! Then she saw it was true all right, big stre
aks of black on the bricks, and the windows all blown out, not a pane of gla
ss left anywhere. Jesus Christ! She was going crazy. She walked her bike up
closer, biting her lip so hard she could taste her own blood. Just look at i
t. Who the hell was doing it! Teeny bits of glass all over the lawn and even
in the trees so the whole place was kind of sparkling in a way that human b
eings probably couldn't make out. Looked to her like nightmare Christmas dec
orations. And the stink of burning wood. It was just hanging there.
She was going to cry! She was going to start screaming! But then she heard s
omething. Not a real sound, but the things that Killer had taught her to lis
ten for. There was a Dead guy in there!
She couldn't believe her luck, and she didn't give a damn what happened, she
was going in there. Yeah, somebody in there. It was real faint. She went a
few more feet, crunching real loud in the dead leaves. No light but somethin
g moving in there, and it knew she was coming. And as she stood there, heart
hammering, afraid, and frantic to go in, somebody came out on the front por
ch, a Dead guy looking right at her.
54 / ANNE RICE
Praise the Lord, she whispered. And he wasn't no jerkoff in a three-piece su
it, either. No, he was a young kid, maybe no more than two years older than
her when they did it to him, and he looked real special. Like he had silver
hair for one thing, just real pretty short curly gray hair, and that always
looked great on a young person. And he was tall too, about six feet, and ski
nny, a real elegant guy, the way she saw it. He had an icy look to his skin
it was so white, and he wore a dark brown turtleneck shirt, real smooth acro
ss his chest, and a fancy cut brown leather jacket and pants, nothing at all
like biker leather. Really boss, this guy, and cuter than any Dead guy in t
he Fang Gang.
"Come inside!" he said in a hiss. "Hurry."
She like to flew up the steps. The air was still full of tiny ashes, and it
hurt her eyes and made her cough. Half the porch had fallen in. Carefully sh
e made her way into the hallway. Some of the stairs was left, but the roof w
ay above was wide open. And the chandelier had fallen down, all crushed and
full of soot. Real spooky, like a haunted house this place.
The Dead guy was in the living room or what was left of it, kicking and pick
ing through burnt-up stuif, furniture and things, sort of in a rage, it look
ed like.
"Baby Jenks, is it?" he said, flashing her a weird fake smile, full of pearl
y teeth including his little fangs, and his gray eyes glittering kind of. "A
nd you're lost, aren't you?"
OK, another goddamn mind reader like Davis. And one with a foreign accent.
"Yeah, so what?" she said. And real surprising, she caught his name like as
if it was a ball and he'd tossed it to her: Laurent. Now that was a classy n
ame, French sounding.
"Stay right there, Baby Jenks," he said. The accent was French too, probably
"There were three in this coven and two were incinerated. The police can't
detect the remains but you will know them if you step on them and you will
not like it."
Christ! And he was telling her the truth, 'cause there was one of them right
there, no jive, at the back of the hall, and it looked like a half-burnt su
it of clothes lying there, kind of vaguely in the outline of a man, and sure
thing, she could tell by the smell, there'd been a Dead guy in the clothes,
and just the sleeves and the pant legs and shoes were left. In the middle o
f it all there was a kind of grayish messy stuff, looked more like grease an
d powder than ashes. Funny the way the shirt sleeve was still neatly stickin
g
THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED / 55
out of the coat sleeve. Now that had been a three-piece suit maybe.
She was getting sick. Could you get sick when you were Dead? She wanted to g
et out of here. What if whatever had done this was coming back? Immortal, ti
e a can to it!
"Don't move," the Dead guy said to her, "and we'll be leaving together just
as soon as we can."
"Like now, OK!" she said. She was shaking, goddamn it. This is what they mea
nt when they said cold sweat!
He'd found a tin box and he was taking all the unburnt money out of it.
"Hey, man, I'm splitting," she said. She could feel something around here, a
nd it had nothing to do with that grease spot on the floor. She was thinking
of the burnt-up coven houses in Dallas and Oklahoma City, the way the Fang
Gang had vanished on her. He got all that, she could tell. His face got soft
, real cute again. He threw down the box and came towards her so fast it sca
red her worse.
"Yes, ma chere," he said in a real nice voice, "all those coven houses, exac
tly. The East Coast has been burnt out like a circuit of lights. There is no
answer at the coven house in Paris or the coven house in Berlin."
He took her arm as they headed for the front door.
"Who the hell's doing this!" she said.
"Who the hell knows, cherie? It destroys the houses, the vampire bars, whate
ver rogues it finds. We have got to get out of here. Now make the bike go."
But she had come to a halt. Something out here. She was standing at the edge
of the porch. Something. She was as scared to go on as she was to go back i
n the house.
"What's wrong?" he asked her in a whisper.
How dark this place was with these great big trees and the houses, they all
looked haunted, and she could hear something, something real low like... lik
e something's breathing. Something like that.
"Baby Jenks? Move it now!"
"But where are we going?" she asked. This thing, whatever it was, it was alm
ost a sound.
"The only place we can go. To him, darling, to the Vampire Lestat. He is out
there in San Francisco waiting, unharmed!"
"Yeah?" she said, staring at the dark street in front of her. "Yeah, right,
to the Vampire Lestat." Just ten steps to the bike.
56 / ANNE RICE
Take it, Baby Jenks. He was about to leave without her. "No, don't you do th
at, you son of a bitch, don't you touch my bike!"
But it was a sound now, wasn't it? Baby Jenks had never heard anything quite
like it. But you hear a lot of things when you're Dead. You hear trains mil
es away, and people talking on planes over your head.
The Dead guy heard it. No, he heard her hearing it! "What is it?" he whisper
ed. Jesus, he was scared. And now he heard it all by himself too.
He pulled her down the steps. She stumbled and almost fell, but he lifted he
r off her feet and put her on the bike.
The noise was getting really loud. It was coming in beats like music. And it
was so loud now she couldn't even hear what this Dead guy was saying to her
She twisted the key, turned the handles to give the Harley gas, and the De
ad guy was on the bike behind her, but Jesus, the noise, she couldn't think.
She couldn't even hear the engine of the bike!
She looked down, trying to see what the hell was going on, was it running, s
he couldn't even feel it. Then she looked up and she knew she was looking to
wards the thing that was sending the noise. It was in the darkness, behind t
he trees.
The Dead guy had leaped off the bike, and he was jabbering away at it, as if
he could see it. But no, he was looking around like a crazy man talking to
himself. But she couldn't hear a word. She just knew it was there, it was lo
oking at them, and the crazy guy was wasting his breath!
She was off the Harley. It had fallen over. The noise stopped. Then there wa
s a loud ringing in her ears.
"梐nything you want!" the Dead guy next to her was saying, "just anything, n
ame it, we will do it. We are your servants?" Then he ran past Baby Jenks, n
early knocking her over and grabbing up her bike.
"Hey!" she shouted, but just as she started for him, he burst into flames! H
e screamed.
And then Baby Jenks screamed too. She screamed and screamed. The burning Dea
d guy was turning over and over on the ground, just pinwheeling. And behind
her, the coven house exploded. She felt the heat on her back. She saw stuff
flying through the air. The sky looked like high noon.
Oh, sweet Jesus, let me live, let me live!
For one split second she thought her heart had burst. She meant to look down
to see if her chest had broken open and her
THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED / 57
heart was spewing out blood like molten lava from a volcano, but then the he
at built up inside her head and swoosh! she was gone.
She was rising up and up through a dark tunnel, and then high above she floa
ted, looking down on the whole scene.
Oh yeah, just like before. And there it was, the thing that had killed them,
a white figure standing in a thicket of trees. And there was the Dead guy's
clothes smoking on the pavement. And her own body just burning away.
Through the flames she could see the pure black outline of her own skull and
her bones. But it didn't frighten her. It didn't really seem that interesti
ng at all.
It was the white figure that amazed her. It looked just like a statue, like
the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Catholic church. She stared at the sparkling
silver threads that seemed to move out from the figure in all directions, th
reads made out of some kind of dancing light. And as she moved higher, she s
aw that the silver threads stretched out, tangling with other threads, to ma
ke a giant net all over the whole world. All through the net were Dead guys,
caught, like helpless flies in a web. Tiny pinpoints of light, pulsing, and
connected to the white figure, and almost beautiful, the sight of it, excep
t it was so sad. Oh, poor souls of all the Dead guys locked in indestructibl
e matter unable to grow old or die.
But she was free. The net was way far away from her now. She was seeing so m
any things.
Like there were thousands and thousands of other dead people floating up her
e, too, in a great hazy gray layer. Some were lost, others were fighting wit
h each other, and some were looking back down to where they'd died, so pitif
ul, like they didn't know or wouldn't believe they were dead. There was even
a couple of them trying to be seen and heard by the living, but that they c
ould not do.
She knew she was dead. This had happened before. She was just passing throug
h this murky lair of sad lingering people. She was on her way! And the pitif
ulness of her life on earth caused her sorrow. But it was not the important
thing now.
The light was shining again, the magnificent light she'd glimpsed when she'd
almost died that first time around. She moved towards it, into it. And this
was truly beautiful. Never had she seen such colors, such radiance, never h
ad she heard the pure music that she was hearing now. There were no words to
describe this; it was beyond any language she'd ever known. And this time n
obody would bring her back!
58 / A N N K RICE
Because the one coming towards her, to take her and to help her梚t was her m
other! And her mother wouldn't let her go.
Never had she felt such love as she felt for her mother; but then love surro
unded her; the light, the color, the love梩hese things were utterly indistin
guishable.
Ah, that poor Baby Jenks, she thought as she looked down to earth just one l
ast time. But she wasn't Baby Jenks now. No, not at all.

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