For a second I couldn't believe it. My heart stopped in my chest.
Then I walked into the house, a steady furious walk that would have stopped for nothing but to find the truth of what I believed.
In an instant I saw it with my own eyes. In a splendid room, they were gathered together, the beautiful lithe figure of Pandora in a gown of brown silk, girdled at the waist in the old Grecian style, Marius in a light velvet smoking jacket over silk trousers, and my children, my beautiful children, radiant Benji in his white gown, dancing barefoot and wildly around the room with his fingers flung out as if to grasp the air in them, and Sybelle, my gorgeous Sybelle, with her arms bare too in a dress of deep rose silk, at the piano, her long hair swept back over her shoulders, just striding into the First Movement again.
All of them vampires, every one.
I clenched my teeth hard, and covered my mouth lest my roars wake the world. I roared and roared into my collapsed hands.
I cried out the single defiant syllable No, No, No, over and over again. I could say nothing else, scream nothing else, do nothing else.
I cried and cried.
I bit down so hard with my teeth that my jaw ached, and my hands shuddered like wings of a bird that wouldn't let me shut up my mouth tight enough, and once again the tears streamed out of my eyes as thickly as they had when I kissed Lestat.
No, No, No, No!
Then suddenly I flung out my hands, coiling them into fists, and the roar would have got loose, it would have burst from me like a raging stream, but Marius took hold of me with great force and flung me against his chest and buried my face against himself.
I struggled to get free. I kicked at him with all of my strength, and I beat at him with my fists.
"How could you do it!" I roared.
His hands enclosed my head in a hopeless trap, and his lips kept covering me with kisses I hated and detested and fought off with desperate flinging gestures.
"How could you? How dare you? How could you?"
At last I gained enough leverage to smash his face with blow after blow.
But what good did it do me? How weak and meaningless were my fists against his strength. How helpless and foolish and small were my gestures, and he stood there, bearing it all, his face unspeakably sad, and his own eyes dry yet full of caring.
"How could you do it, how could you do it!" I demanded. I would not cease.
But suddenly Sybelle rose from the piano, and with her arms out ran to me. And Benji, who had been watching all the while, rushed to me also, and they imprisoned me gently in their tender arms.
"Oh, Armand, don't be angry, don't be, don't be sad," Sybelle cried softly against my ear. "Oh, my magnificent Armand, don't be sad, don't be. Don't be cross. We're with you forever. "
"Armand, we are with you! He did the magic," cried Benji. "We didn't have to be born from black eggs, you Dybbuk, to tell us such a tale! Armand, we will never die now, we will never be sick, and never hurt and never afraid again. " He jumped up and down with glee and spun in another mirthful circle, astonished and laughing at his new vigor, that he could leap so high and with such g
race. "Armand, we are so happy. "
"Oh, yes, please," cried Sybelle softly in her deeper gentler voice. "I love you so much, Armand, I love you so very very much. We had to do it. We had to. We had to do it, to always and forever be with you. "
My fingers hovered about her, wanting to comfort her, and then, as she ground her forehead desperately into my neck, hugging me tight around the chest, I couldn't not touch her, couldn't not embrace her, couldn't not assure her.
"Armand, I love you, I adore you, Armand, I live only for you, and now with you always," she said.
I nodded, I tried to speak. She kissed my tears. She began to kiss them rapidly and desperately. "Stop it, stop crying, don't cry," she kept saying in her urgent low whisper. "Armand, we love you. "
"Armand, we are so happy!" cried Benji. "Look, Armand, look! We can dance together now to her music. We can do everything together. Armand, we have hunted already. " He dashed up to me and bent his knees, poised to spring with excitement as if to emphasize his point. Then he sighed and flung out his arms to me again, "Ah, poor Armand, you are all wrong, all filled with wrong dreams. Armand, don't you see?"
"I love you," I whispered in a tiny voice into Sybelle's ear. I whispered it again, and then my resistance broke completely, and I crushed her gently to me and with rampant fingers felt her silky white skin and the zinging fineness of her shining hair.
Still holding her to me, I whispered, "Don't tremble, I love you, I love you. "
I clasped Benji to me with my left hand. "And you, scamp, you can tell me all of it in time. Just let me hold you now. Let me hold you. "
I was shivering. I was the one shivering. They enclosed me again with all their tenderness, seeking to keep me warm.