The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice Page A

next to her was saying, "just anything, name it, we will do it. We are your servants-!" Then he ran past Baby Jenks, nearly knocking her over and grabbing up her bike.
     
    "Hey!" she shouted, but just as she started for him, he burst into flames! He screamed.
     
    And then Baby Jenks screamed too. She screamed and screamed. The burning Dead guy was turning over and over on the ground, just pinwheeling. And behind her, the coven house exploded. She felt the heat on her back. She saw stuff flying through the air. The sky looked like high noon.
     
    Oh, sweet Jesus, let me live, let me live!
     
    For one split second she thought her heart had burst. She meant to look down to see if her chest had broken open and her heart was spewing out blood like molten lava from a volcano, but then the heat built up inside her head and swoosh! she was gone.
     
    She was rising up and up through a dark tunnel, and then high above she floated, looking down on the whole scene.
     
    Oh yeah, just like before. And there it was, the thing that had killed them, a white figure standing in a thicket of trees. And there was the Dead guy's clothes smoking on the pavement. And her own body just burning away.
     
    Through the flames she could see the pure black outline of her own skull and her bones. But it didn't frighten her. It didn't really seem that interesting at all.
     
    It was the white figure that amazed her. It looked just like a statue, like the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Catholic church. She stared at the sparkling silver threads that seemed to move out from the figure in all directions, threads made out of some kind of dancing light. And as she moved higher, she saw that the silver threads stretched out, tangling with other threads, to make a giant net all over the whole world. All through the net were Dead guys, caught, like helpless flies in a web. Tiny pinpoints of light, pulsing, and connected to the white figure, and almost beautiful, the sight of it, except it was so sad. Oh, poor souls of all the Dead guys locked in indestructible matter unable to grow old or die.
     
    But she was free. The net was way far away from her now. She was seeing so many things.
     
    Like there were thousands and thousands of other dead people floating up here, too, in a great hazy gray layer. Some were lost, others were fighting with each other, and some were looking back down to where they'd died, so pitiful, like they didn't know or wouldn't believe they were dead. There was even a couple of them trying to be seen and heard by the living, but that they could not do.
     
    She knew she was dead. This had happened before. She was just passing through this murky lair of sad lingering people. She was on her way! And the pitifulness of her life on earth caused her sorrow. But it was not the important thing now.
     
    The light was shining again, the magnificent light she'd glimpsed when she'd almost died that first time around. She moved towards it, into it. And this was truly beautiful. Never had she seen such colors, such radiance, never had she heard the pure music that she was hearing now. There were no words to describe this; it was beyond any language she'd ever known. And this time nobody would bring her back!
     
    Because the one coming towards her, to take her and to help her-it was her mother! And her mother wouldn't let her go.
     
    Never had she felt such love as she felt for her mother; but then love surrounded her; the light, the color, the love-these things were utterly indistinguishable.
     
    Ah, that poor Baby Jenks, she thought as she looked down to earth just one last time. But she wasn't Baby Jenks now. No, not at all.
     
    THE GODDESS PANDORA
     
    Once we had the words.
     
    Ox and Falcon. Plow.
     
    There was clarity.
     
    Savage as horns curved.
     
    We lived in stone rooms.
     
    We hung our hair out the windows and up it climbed the men.
     
    A garden behind the ears, the curls.
     
    On each hill a king of that hill. At night the threads