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An hour passed, perhaps er on his face frootten battle He seeile as an emptied shell
Gabrielle sat across from him, and she too stared at the flaly cohts
I was thinking of Marius And Marius and Mariusthe vampire who had painted pictures in and of the real world Triptychs, portraits, frescoes on the walls of his palazzo
And the real world had never suspected him nor hunted him nor cast him out It was this band of hooded fiends who cas, the ones who shared the Dark Gift with him -- had he himself ever called it the Dark Gift? -- they were the ones who said he couldn’t live and create ae at Renaud’s and I heardbecome a roar Nicolas said, "It is splendid" I said, "It is petty" And it was like striking Nicolas In ht: "Let me have what I can believe in You would never do that"
The triptychs of Marius were in churches and convent chapels, reat houses in Venice and Padua The vaone into holy places to pull thenature perhaps worked into the detail, these creations of the vampire who surrounded himself with mortal apprentices, kept a mortal lover from whom he took the little drink, went out alone to kill
I thought of the night in the inn when I had seen the lessness of life, and the soft fathomless despair of Arht drown This orse than the blasted shore in Nicki’s mind This was for three centuries, this darkness, this nothingness
The radiant auburn-haired child by the fire could open his ain and out would come blackness like ink to cover the world
That is, if there had not been this protagonist, this Venetianon the panels he painted -- it had to be-- and our own kind, the elect of Satan, hadtorch
Had Gabrielle seen these paintings in the story as I had seen them? Did they burn in her mind’s eye as they did insome route intowith the hooded fiends who turned the paintings into chaos again
In a dull sort of ht of the traveler’s tales that Marius was alive, seen in Egypt or Greece
I wanted to ask Armand, wasn’t it possible? MariusBut it seeend," he whispered His voice was as precise as the inner voice Unhurriedly, he continued without ever looking away froend from the olden times before they destroyed us both"
"Perhaps not," I said Echo of the visions, paintings on the walls "Maybe Marius is alive"
"We areupon how you wish to see us And when you just know about us, whether it’s through the dark blood or pro is possible But that isn’t so The world closes tight around this h; and you don’t hope for other miracles That is, you become accustoain So they say Marius continues They all continue somewhere, that’s what you want to believe
"Not a single one reht the ritual; and er even there Years and years have passed since there was any communication from the coven But they all exist sohed "Doesn’t reater and ht crush Armand beneath it That in spite of the thirst in hiether, and the silent furnace of his body healing the bruises and the broken flesh, he could not will himself into the world above to hunt Rather suffer the thirst and the heat of the silent furnace Rather stay here and be with us
But he already knew the answer, that he could not be with us
Gabrielle and I didn’t have to speak to let him know We did not even have to resolve the question in our ht know the future because God is the possessor of all the facts
Unbearable anguish And Gabrielle’s expression all the more weary, sad
"You know that with all my soul I do want to take you with us," I said I was surprised at my own emotion "But it would be disaster for us all"
No change in hie fro of Marius," I confessed
I know And you do not think of Those Who Must Be Kept, which is e
"That is merely another mystery," I said "And there are a thousand mysteries I think of Marius! And I’m too much the slave ofto linger so on Marius, to extract that one radiant figure from the tale"
Doesn’t ive
"When a being reveals his pain in such a torrent, you are bound to respect the whole of the tragedy You have to try to comprehend And such helplessness, such despair is almost incomprehensible to me That’s why I think of Marius Marius I understand You I don’t understand"
Why?
Silence
Didn’t he deserve the truth?
"I’ve been a rebel always," I said "You’ve been the slave of everything that ever claimed you"
"I was the leader of my coven!"
"No You were the slave of Marius and then of the Children of Darkness You fell under the spell of one and then the other What you suffer now is the absence of a spell I think I shudder that you caused me so to understand it for a little while, to know it as if I were a different being than I am"
"Doesn’t matter," he said, eyes still on the fire "You think too much in terms of decision and action This tale is no explanation And I ahts or in words And we all know the answer you have given is too immense to be voiced and we all three of us know that it is final What I don’t knohy So I am a creature very different froo with you? I will do whatever you wish if you take ht of Marius with his brush and the pots of egg te that they told you after they burned those paintings?" I asked "How could you have given yourself over to theer
Caution in Gabrielle’s face, but not fear
"And you, when you stood on the stage and you saw the audience screaet out of the theater -- howthe crowd and the crowd strea into the boulevard du Te mortals, that’s what you believed You knew you did not And there was no band of fiends in hooded robes to tell you You knew So Marius did not belong a mortals So I did not"
"Ah, but it’s different"
"No, it is not That’s why you scorn the Theater of the Va out its little draold from the boulevard crowds You do not wish to deceive as Marius deceived It divides you ever more from mankind You want to pretend to be ry and it e," I said, "I revealedI wanted so manifest the ain Better they should run fro nized by those upon whom I preyed"
"But it was not better"
"No What Marius did was better He did not deceive"
"Of course he did He fooled everyone!"
"No He found a way to imitate mortal life To be one with mortals He slew only the evildoer, and he painted as els and blue skies, clouds, those are the things you s And I see wisdom in him and a lack of vanity He did not need to reveal himself He had lived a thousand years and he believed more in the vistas of heaven that he painted than in himself"
Confusion
Doesn’t els
"Those are only metaphors," I said "And it does matter! If you are to rebuild, if you are to find the Devil’s Road again, it does matter! There are ways for us to exist If I could only is thatto lanced at him suddenly "Do you believe in God?" she asked
"Yes, always in God," he answered "It is Satan -- our master -- who is the fiction and that is the fiction which has betrayed me"
"Oh, then you are truly damned," I said "And you know full well that your retreat into the fraternity of the Children of Darkness was a retreat froer
"Your heart breaks for so suddenly "You brought Gabrielle and Nicolas over the barrier to you, but you could not go back"
"Why is it you don’t hearken to your own story?" I asked "Is it that you have never forgiven Marius for not warning you about the you fall into their hands? You will never take anything, not exaain? I am not Marius, but I tell you since I set my feet on the Devil’s Road, I have heard of only one elder who could teach , and that is Marius, your Venetianto me of a way to be immortal"
"Mockery"
"No It wasn’t mockery! And you are the one whose heart breaks for what he will never have: another body of belief, another spell"
No answer
"We cannot be Marius for you," I said, "or the dark lord, Santino We are not artists with a great vision that will carry you forward And we are not evil coven ion to perdition And this dolorious mandate -- is what you must have"
I had risen toto I had co down at him
And I saw, out of the comer of my eye, Gabrielle’s subtle nod of approval, and the way that she closed her eyes for a h of relief
He was perfectly still
"You have to suffer through this emptiness," I said, "and find what impels you to continue If you come with us ill fail you and you will destroy us"
"How suffer through it?" He looked up at nant frown "How do I begin? You ht hand of God! But for me the world, the real world in which Marius lived, is beyond reach I never lived in it I push against the glass But how do I get in?"
"I can’t tell you that," I said
"You have to study this age," Gabrielle interrupted Her voice was cal
He looked towards her as she spoke
"You have to understand the age," she continued, "through its literature and its music and its art You have come up out of the earth, as you yourself put it Now live in the world"
No answer froed flat with all its books on the floor Western civilization in heaps
"And what better place is there than the center of things, the boulevard and the theater?" Gabrielle asked