Blood Canticle Read Free Page B

mystical import. I’ve put him to sleep. But what did I expect, especially of the Pope? He works so hard. He suffers. He thinks. He has already traveled to Asia and Eastern Europe this year, and he will soon be going to Toronto and Guatemala and Mexico. I don’t know how he can do these things.
    I place my hand on his forehead.
    Then I leave.
    I go down the stairs to the Sistine Chapel. It is empty and dark, of course. It is chilly too. But never fear, my saintly eyes are as good as my vampire eyes, and I can see the swarming magnificence.
    Alone—cut off from all the world and all things—I stand there. I want to lie on the floor face down in the manner of a priest at his ordination. I want to be a priest. I want to consecrate the host! I want this so badly that I ache for it. I DON’T WANT TO DO EVIL.
    But the fact is, my fantasy of Saint Lestat is dissolving. I know it for what it is and I can’t sustain it.
    I know that I am no saint and never was or will be. No banner of me ever unfurled in St. Peter’s Square in the sunlight. No crowd of hundreds of thousands ever cheered for my canonization. No string of cardinals ever attended the ceremony because it never took place. And I have no odorless, tasteless, harmless formula that exactly mimics crack, cocaine and heroin combined, so I can’t save the world.
    I’m not even standing in the Sistine Chapel. I am far away from it, in a place of warmth, though just as lonely.
    I am a vampire. For over two hundred years I’ve loved it. I am filled with the blood of others to my very eyeballs. I am polluted with it. I am as cursed as the Hemorrhissa before she touched the hem of Christ’s garment in Capharnaum! I live by blood. I am ritually impure.
    And there’s only one kind of miracle I can work. We call it the Dark Trick and I’m about to do it.
    And do you think all this guilt is about to stop me?
Nada,
never,
mais non,
forget about it, get out of here, not in a pig’s eye, pa-lease, gimme a break, no way.
    I told you I’d come back, didn’t I?
    I’m irrepressible, unforgivable, unstoppable, shameless, thoughtless, hopeless, heartless, running rampant, the wild child, undaunted, unrepentant, unsaved.
    And baby, there is a story to tell.
    I hear Hell’s Bells calling me. It’s time to boogie!
    SO SLAM CUT TO :

2
    BLACKWOOD FARM : EXTERIOR ; EVENING .
    A LITTLE COUNTRY CEMETERY on the edge of a cypress swamp, with a dozen or more old cement graves, most names long ago effaced, and one of these raised rectangular tombs black with soot from a recent fire, and the whole surrounded by a small iron fence and four immense oak trees, the kind weighted down by their dipping branches, and the sky the perfect color of lilacs, and the heat of the summer sweet and caressing and—
    —you bet I’ve got on my black velvet frock coat (close-up: tapered at the waist, brass buttons) and my motorcycle boots, and a brand-new linen shirt loaded with lace at cuffs and throat (pity the poor slob who snickers at me on account of that!), and I haven’t cut my shoulder-length blond mane tonight, which I sometimes do for variety, and I’ve chucked my violet glasses because who cares that my eyes attract attention, and my skin’s still dramatically tanned from my years-ago suicide attempt in the raw sun of the Gobi Desert, and I’m thinking—
    —Dark Trick, yes, work the miracle, they need you, up there in the Big House, you Brat Prince, you Sheik among vampires, stop brooding and mourning down here, go to it, there’s a delicate situation up there in the Big House—and it is
    TIME TO TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED AND SO I DO :
    I PACED , having just risen from my secret hiding place, and I mourned bitterly for another Blood Drinker who had perished in this very cemetery, on the aforementioned blackened grave, in an immense fire, and of her own will, leaving us only last night, without the slightest warning.
    This was Merrick Mayfair, only three years among the Undead or less, and