Prince Lestat

“But who is the Voice?” asked Arjun.

Gremt grew quiet. “Pandora is coming,” he said.

Arjun rose to his feet, almost upsetting the big chair behind him. He looked from right to left, trying to see through the darkness.

When she emerged from the long thick bamboo hedge, he went into her arms, and for a long moment, they held one another, rocking back and forth, and then he broke the grip and covered her face with kisses. She stood very still, allowing this, a slender female with wavy brown hair wearing a long simple hooded cloak and robe, her pale-white hands stroking Arjun’s hair, her eyes closed as she savored the moment.

Excitedly he brought her towards the veranda, and into the light coming from the rooms of the bungalow. “Sit here, please, sit here!” he said, bringing her to the teakwood table and the peacock chairs. Then, unable to stop himself, he embraced her again and sobbed silently against her shoulder.

She whispered to him in the tongue they’d shared when she’d wooed and wed him. She consoled him with her kisses.

Gremt had risen to his feet as any gentleman might in the presence of a woman. And this woman, Pandora, took his measure carefully, even as she suffered more kisses and embraces from Arjun. Her eyes were now fixed on him, and she was obviously listening to the beat of Gremt’s heart, to the sound of his respiration, as she studied his skin, his eyes, his hair.

What did she see? A tall blue-eyed male with short black wavy hair and Caucasian skin and a face modeled on a Greek statue, a man with broad capable shoulders and slender hands, dressed in a plain long black silk thawb that covered him to his ankles, a garment that might have passed for a priest’s cassock in another country. This was the body Gremt had perfected for himself over some fourteen hundred years. It might have fooled any human being on the planet. It could withstand the scrutiny of X-ray machines in modern airports. But it could not fool Pandora. It wasn’t biologically human.

She was shocked to the soul, but Gremt knew full well she’d seen beings like him before. Many times. Powerful beings walking around in made-up bodies, so to speak. Indeed she’d seen Gremt many a time, though she had not always known that it was Gremt by any means. And the very first time he had ever seen her, he had been bodiless.

“I am your friend,” Gremt said immediately. And he extended his hand to her, though she didn’t lift her hand in response.

Arjun was now wiping away his tears with an old linen handkerchief. Carefully, he tucked this back into his pocket.

“I did not mean to do it!” he said frantically. He was imploring her to understand.

And Pandora as if wakened from a spell turned her eyes away from Gremt and back to him.

“I knew you didn’t,” she said. “I understood this completely.”

“What you must think of me!” he persisted, his face stricken with shame.

“Ah, but it wasn’t you at all, was it?” she said at once, taking his hand and then kissing him again and drawing back once more to look at Gremt. “It was a voice, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, a voice,” he said. “I was telling Gremt. Gremt understands. Gremt is a friend.”

Very reluctantly, she sat down as Arjun urged her to do so, and he settled back into his chair to the left of her.

Only then did Gremt take his seat again.

“But you must have believed me guilty,” Arjun said to Pandora, “or why else would you have come here to me?”

Pandora was again staring at Gremt. She was far too uncomfortable with the obvious mystery of Gremt to hear what Arjun wanted her to hear.

Gremt turned to Arjun and spoke softly. “Pandora knew because of the pictures, Arjun. When it happened there were witnesses snapping pictures, and those pictures went viral, as they say on the internet. These pictures were infinitely more detailed and clear than telepathic glimpses. These pictures don’t fade as memory fades; they will circulate for all time. And in New York, a young blood drinker named Benjamin Mahmoud, made by Marius, posted the pictures on a website. And Pandora saw those pictures.”

“Ahhh! Unspeakable disgrace,” Arjun said, covering his face with his long fingers. “And so Marius and his children think I am guilty of this. And how many others believe it?”

“No, not so,” said Pandora. “We’re all coming to understand. Everyone is coming to understand.”

“You must. You must know that it was the Voice.” He looked helplessly to Gremt for confirmation.

“But Arjun is himself now,” said Gremt. “And he is now perfectly capable of resisting the Voice. And the Voice has moved on to some other slumbering blood drinkers.”

“Yes, that explains part of it,” said Pandora, “but not all of it. Because it is now almost certain that the burnings happening in South America are being done by none other than Khayman.”

“Khayman?” said Arjun. “Gentle Khayman? But I thought he had become the consort and guard of the twins now!”

“That he is and has been for a long time,” said Gremt. “But Khayman has always been a broken soul, and he is now apparently as susceptible to the Voice as some of the other old ones.”

“And Maharet cannot control him?” asked Pandora. There was an edge to her voice. She wanted to talk of all this, wanted to know what Gremt knew, but she wanted most certainly to know more about Gremt, so she spoke with a tone that said, You are a stranger to me.

She narrowed her eyes. “Is Maharet herself the Voice?” she asked with obvious horror.

Gremt said nothing.

“Could it be her twin, Mekare?”

Still Gremt didn’t answer.

“Unspeakable thought,” whispered Arjun.

“Well, who else could guide gentle Khayman to such things?” Pandora murmured. She was thinking out loud.

Again Gremt didn’t answer.

“And if it is not one of those two,” Pandora went on. “Well, then, who is it?” She asked it as if she were a lawyer and Gremt were a hostile witness in a courtroom.

“It’s far from clear,” Gremt said finally. “But I think I know who it is. What I don’t know is what it wants and what it means to do in the long run.”

“And what is all this to you, precisely?” Pandora demanded.

Arjun was frightened by her tone, and he blinked as if she were a light blinding him with her coldness.

“What does it matter to you, in particular,” she pressed, “what happens to us, creatures like us?”