Page 67 (1/2)

4

The vast sprawling parking lots of the San Francisco Cow Palace were overfloith frenzied ates, my musicians in the limousine ahead, Louis in the leatherlined Porsche besidein the black-caped costume of the band, he looked as if he’d stepped out of the pages of his own story, his green eyes passing a little fearfully over the screauards who kept them back and away from us

The hall had been sold out for a month; the disappointed fans wanted the music broadcast outside so they could hear it Beer cans littered the ground Teenagers sat atop car roofs and on trunks and hoods, radios blaring The Vasidethat ould have the outside video screens and speakers The San Francisco police had given the go-ahead to prevent a riot

I could feel Louis’s h the police lines and pressed theainst hisas theugly tube-shaped hall

I was positively enthralled as happening And the recklessness in ain the fans surrounded the car before they were swept back, and I was beginning to understand hooefully I had underestimated this entire experience

The filmed rock shows I’d watched hadn’t prepared hin my head, the way the sha

It was uards, we ran into the heavily secured backstage area, Tough Cookie holding tight toLarry ahead of him

The fans tore at our hair, our capes I reached back and gathered Louis under h the doors with us

And then in the curtained dressing rooms I heard it for the first time, the bestial sound of the crowd-fifteen thousand souls chanting and screa under one roof

No, I did not have this under control, this fierce glee that made my entire body shudder When had this ever happened to me before, this near hilarity?

I pushed up to the front and looked through the peephole into the auditoriu oval, up to the very rafters And in the vast open center, afists into the se platform Hashish, beer, human blood sineers were shouting that ere set Face paint had been retouched, black velvet capes brushed, black ties straightened No good to keep this croaiting a iven to kill the houselights And a great inhu up the walls I could feel it in the floor beneathelectronic buzz announced the connection of "the equiphpeeled off I clasped Louis’s ar kiss, and then felt him release me

Everywhere beyond the curtain people snapped on their little chehters, until thousands and thousands of tiny fla erupted, died out, the general roar rolling up and down, pierced by randoht of Renaud’s so long ago I positively saw it But this place was like the Ro the tapes, the filiven no taste of this

The engineer gave the signal, and we shot through the curtain, thebecause they couldn’t see, as I maneuvered effortlessly over the cables and wires

I was at the lip of the stage right over the heads of the swaying, shouting crowd Alex was at the druuitar in hand, Larry was at the huge circular keyboard of the synthesizer

I turned around and glanced up at the giant video screens which would es for the scrutiny of every pair of eyes in the house Then back at the sea of screasters

Waves and waves of noise inundated us from the darkness I could smell the heat and the blood

Then the ihts went on Violent beaht us, and the screa reached an unbelievable pitch The entire hall was on its feet

I could feel the light crawling on lanced around to see lorified and frenzied already as they perched a

The sweat broke out on my forehead as I saw the fists raised everywhere in salute And scattered all through the hall were youngsters in their Halloween va with artificial blood, sos about their eyes to hastly Catcalls and hoots and raucous cries rose above the general din

No, this was not likein the air-cooled cork-lined chambers of the studio This was a human experience es of the video files of the blood swoon

I was shuddering with pure exhilaration and the red-tinged sas pouring down hts swept the audience, leaving us bathed in a ht hit, the croent into convulsions, redoubling their cries

What was it about this sound? It signaled uillotine, the ancient Roathered in the grove awaiting Marius, the god I could see the grove as I had when Marius told the tale; had the torches been any iants been larger than these steel ladders that held the banks of speakers and incandescent spotlights on either side of us?

But there was no violence here; there was no death -- only this childish exuberance pouring forth froy focused and contained as naturally as it was cut loose

Another wave of hashish fro-haired leather-clad bikers with spoked leather bracelets clapping their hands above their heads -- ghosts of the Keltoi, they see And fro hollow s that felt like love

The lights were flashing on and off so that thein fits and jerks

They were chanting in unison, now the volu, as it, LESTAT, LESTAT, LESTAT

Oh, this is too divine What ence, this worship? I clasped the ends of nal I shook out estures sent a current of renewed screahts converged on the stage I raised s

The screareat monolithic roar

"I AM THE VAMPIRE LESTAT!" I shouted at the top of s as I stepped way back from the microphone, and the sound was alth of the oval theater, and the voice of the crowd rose even higher, louder, as if to devour the ringing sound

"COME ON, LET ME HEAR YOU! YOU LOVE ME!" I shouted suddenly, without deciding to do it Everywhere people were sto not only on the concrete floors but on the wooden seats

"HOW MANY OF YOU WOULD BE VAMPIRES?"

The roar beca to scra the straight up and down, a beer can in each hand

The lights went brighter like the glare of an explosion And there rose froine of a loco onto the stage

Every other sound in the auditoriu silence the crowd danced and bobbed before uitar The dru locomotive sound of the synthesizer crested, then broke into a bubbling caldron of noise in tiin the chant in theover the accompaniment:

I AM THE VAMPIRE LESTAT YOU ARE HERE FOR THE GRAND SABBAT BUT I PITY YOU YOUR LOT

I grabbed the e and then to the other, the cape flaring out behind me:

YOU CAN’T RESIST THE LORDS OF NIGHT THEY HAVE NO MERCY ON YOUR PLIGHT IN YOUR FEAR THEY TAKE DELIGHT

They were reaching out for irls lifted by their male companions to touch my cape as it swirled over their heads

YET IN LOVE, WE WILL TAKE YOU,

AND IN RAPTURE, WE’LL BREAK YOU AND IN DEATH WE’LL RELEASE YOU

NO ONE CAN SAY

YOU WERE NOT WARNED

Tough Cookie, stru wildly, the lissando, dru caldron of the synthesizer rising again

I felt the music come up into my bones Not even at the old Roman Sabbat had it taken hold of me like this

I pitchedthee We were perfor the free and erotic contortions of Punchinello and Harlequin and all the old co now as they had done, the instruain, as we urged each other on with our dancing, nothing rehearsed, everything within character, everything utterly new

The guards shoved people back roughly as they tried to join us Yet we danced over the edge of the platfor our hair around our faces, turning round to see ourselves above in an iiant screens The sound traveled up through my body as I turned back to the crowd It traveled like a steel ball finding one pocket after another inoff the floor in a great slow leap, and then descending silently again, the black cape flaring,teeth

Euphoria Deafening applause

And everywhere I saw paletheir collars down and stretching their necks And they were gesturing to

The blood scent was thick as the smoke in the air Flesh and flesh and flesh And yet everywhere the canny innocence, the unfatho but art! No one would be hurt It was safe, this splendid hysteria

When I screaht it was the sound systeht it was a trick And why not, whenat them from all sides and they could forsake our flesh and blood for the great glowing giants on the screens above us?

Marius, I wish you could behold this! Gabrielle, where are you?

The lyrics poured out, sung by the whole band again in unison, Tough Cookie’s lovely soprano soaring over the others, before she wrung her head round and round in a circle, her hair flopping down to touch the boards in front of her feet, her guitar jerking lasciviously like a giant phallus, thousands and thousands sta in unison

"I AM TELLING YOU I AM A VAMPIRE!" I screamed suddenly

Ecstasy, delirium

"I AM EVIL! EVIL!"

"Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, YES, YES, YES"

I threw out my arms, my hands curved upwards:

"I WANT TO DRINK UP YOUR SOULS!"

The big woolly-haired biker in the black leather jacket backed up, knocking over those behind hie next to uards went to tackle hi hithat geyser of blood ready to spew straight upwards!

But they had torn hih Cookie was besideon her black satin pants, her whirling cape, her arm out to steady me, even as I tried to slip free

Now I knew all that had been left out of the pages I had read about the rock singers -- this ious frenzy We were in the ancient grove all right We were all with the gods

And ere blowing out the fuses on the first song And rolling into the next, as the crowd picked up the rhyth the lyrics they knew fro in time with it:

CHILDREN OF DARKNESS MEET THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT

CHILDREN OF MAN, FIGHT THE CHILDREN OF NIGHT

And again they cheered and bellowed and wailed, unmindful of the words Could the old Keltoi have cut loose with lustier ululations on the verge of ain there was no

Passion rolled towards the ie of death, not death I could feel it like the scalding illumination on the pores of h Cookie’s a the farthest nooks and crannies, the a soul

Deliver etting everything else, and sacrificing all purpose, all resolve to it I want you, my babies I want your blood, innocent blood I want your adoration at the moment when I sink my teeth Yes, this is beyond all temptation

But in this moment of precious stillness and shame, I saw them for the first time, the real ones out there Tiny white faces tossed like nus’s face had been in that long-ago little boulevard hall And I knew that back beyond the curtains, Louis also saw the from them, onder and fear

"ALL YOU REAL VAMPIRES OUT THERE," I shouted "REVEAL YOURSELVES!" And they reeless, as the painted and costumed mortals about them ild