Prince Lestat by Anne Rice Page A

what a picture of innocence in one who would conquer the human world, in one who wanted to be the Queen of Heaven.
    “And Mekare,” I said. “Have you never drunk from her?” I asked.
    Jesse regarded me again for a long moment as if I’d said something shocking and unpleasant and then she simply shook her head. “I’m not aware that anyone has ever approached her for her blood. I’ve never seen Maharet drink Mekare’s blood or offer her blood to Mekare. I’m not sure they’d ever do such a thing, or ever did—that is, after the very first encounter.”
    “I have a deep suspicion that if anyone ever did try to drink her blood,” said David, “she’d regard it as vile and she’d destroy that person, perhaps in some crude way, as with her fist.”
    Her fist. The six-thousand-year-old fist. Something to consider. A six-thousand-year-old immortal could destroy this hotel with her fist if she had a mind to do it, and the time.
    Mekare had destroyed Akasha in a crude and simple way, that was certain, throwing her back against a plate-glass window with such force that she broke the glass. I saw that again, saw that great jagged sheet descending like the blade of a guillotine to sever her head. But I hadn’t seen everything. Perhaps nobody really had except Maharet. How had the skull of Akasha been broken? Ah, the mystery of it: the combination of vulnerability and overwhelming strength.
    “I never knew Mekare to have any sense of her powers,” said David, “any sense of the Cloud Gift or the Mind Gift or the Fire Gift. From all you’ve told me, she came against Akasha with the certainty of an equal, nothing more.”
    “Thank the gods for that,” said Jesse.
    When she’d risen to kill the Queen, Mekare had come over land, walking night after night through jungle and desert, over mountain and valley, until she’d reached the Sonoma compound where we had all come together, guided by what images, what voices, we never knew. Out of what grave or cave she’d come we were never to know either. And I understood now the full implications of all that Jesse had been telling us: There never would be answers to our questions about Mekare. There never would be a biography of Mekare. There never would be a voice speaking on behalf of Mekare. There would never be a Mekare typing away on a computer to pour out her thoughts to us.
    “She doesn’t know she’s the Queen of the Damned, does she?” I asked.
    Jesse and David stared at me.
    “And did Fareed offer to make for her a new tongue?” I pushed.
    Again my question shocked both of them. Obviously it was extremely hard for all of us to deal with the implications of the existence and knowledge of Fareed. And the power and mystery of Mekare. Well, we were here to talk, weren’t we? The question of the tongue seemed obvious to me. Mekare had no tongue. Her tongue had been ripped out before she was brought into the Blood. Akasha was guilty. She’d blinded one and ripped the tongue from the other.
    “I think that he did make this offer,” Jesse explained, “but there was no way to communicate this to Mekare or to make her cooperate. I’m only surmising. I’m not sure. They’re all deaf to each other’s thoughts, these ancient ones, as you know. But as usual, I heard nothing emanating from Mekare. I’d accepted the idea that she was mindless. She was willing enough to be the passive victim of tests, that was no problem. But beyond that, whenever he drew near to her or tried to examine her mouth, she stared at him as if she were watching the falling rain.”
    I could well imagine how frightening that must have been even for the intrepid Fareed.
    “Was he able to narcotize her?” I asked.
    David was clearly shocked. “You know you really are past all patience,” he muttered.
    “Why, for not putting it poetically?”
    “Only for very short intervals,” Jesse said, “and only a few times. She grew tired of the needles and stared at him like a statue come to