The Queen of the Damned (7 page)

She’d tried to read the Vampire Lestat’s book—the whole history of
Dead guys back to ancient times and all—but there were just too many big words and konk, she was asleep.

Killer and Davis said she’d find out she could read real fast now if she just stuck with it. They carried copies of Lestat’s book around with them, and the first one, the one with the title she could never get straight, something like “conversations with the vampire,” or “talking with the vampire,” or “getting to meet the vampire,” or something like that. Davis would read out loud from that one sometimes, but Baby Jenks couldn’t take it in, snore! The Dead Guy, Louis, or whoever he was, had been made Dead down in New Orleans and the book was full of stuff about banana leaves and iron railings and Spanish moss.

“Baby Jenks, they know everything, the old European ones,” Davis had said. “They know how it started, they know we can go on and on if we hang in there, live to be a thousand years old and turn into white marble.”

“Gee, that’s just great, Davis,” Baby Jenks said. “It’s bad enough now not being able to walk into a Seven Eleven under those lights without people looking at you. Who wants to look like white marble?”

“Baby Jenks, you don’t need anything anymore from the Seven Eleven,” Davis said real calmly. But he got the point.

Forget the books. Baby Jenks did love the Vampire Lestat’s music, and those songs just kept giving her a lot, especially that one about Those Who Must Be Kept—the Egyptian King and Queen—though to tell the truth she didn’t know what the hell it meant till Killer explained.

“They’re the parents of all vampires, Baby Jenks, the Mother and the Father. See, we’re all an unbroken line of blood coming down from the King and the Queen in ancient Egypt who are called Those Who Must Be Kept. And the reason you gotta keep them is if you destroy them, you destroy all of us, too.”

Sounded like a bunch of bull to her.

“Lestat’s seen the Mother and the Father,” Davis said. “Found them hidden on a Greek island, so he knows that it’s the truth. That’s what he’s been telling everybody with these songs—and it’s the truth.”

“And the Mother and the Father don’t move or speak or drink blood, Baby Jenks,” Killer said. He looked real thoughtful, sad, almost. “They just sit there and stare like they’ve done for thousands of years. Nobody knows what those two know.”

“Probably nothing,” Baby Jenks had said disgustedly. “And I tell you, this is some kind of being immortal! What do you mean the big city Dead guys can kill us? Just how can they manage that?”

“Fire and sun can always do it,” Killer answered just a touch impatient.
“I told you that. Now mind me, please. You can always fight the big city Dead guys. You’re tough. Fact is, the big city Dead are as scared of you as you will ever be of them. You just beat it when you see a Dead guy you don’t know. That’s a rule that’s followed by everybody who’s Dead.”

After they’d left the coven house, she’d got another big surprise from Killer: he’d told her about the vampire bars. Big fancy places in New York and San Francisco and New Orleans, where the Dead guys met in the back rooms while the damn fool human beings drank and danced up front. In there, no other Dead guy could kill you, city slicker, European, or rogue like her.

“You run for one of those places,” he told her, “if the big city Dead guys ever get on your case.”

“I’m not old enough to go in a bar,” Baby Jenks said.

That really did it. He and Davis laughed themselves sick. They were falling off their motorcycles.

“You find a vampire bar, Baby Jenks,” Killer said, “you just give them the Evil Eye and say ‘Let me in.’ ”

Yeah, she’d done that Evil Eye on people and made them do stuff, it worked OK. And truth was, they’d never seen the vampire bars. Just heard about them. Didn’t know where they were. She’d had lots of questions when they finally left St. Louis.

But as she made her way north towards the same city now, the only thing in the world she cared about was getting to that same damned coven house. Big city Dead guys, here I come. She’d go clean out of her head if she had to go on alone.

The music in the earphones stopped. The tape had run out. She couldn’t stand the silence in the roar of the wind. The dream came back; she saw those twins again, the soldiers coming. Jesus. If she didn’t block it out, the whole damn dream would replay itself like the tape.

Steadying the bike with one hand, she reached in her jacket to open the little cassette player. She flipped the tape over. “Sing on, man!” she said, her voice sounding shrill and tiny to her over the roar of the wind, if she heard it at all.

Yes sir, that was the one she loved. That’s the one she’d been listening to when she fell asleep waiting for her mother to come home from work in Gun Barrel City. It wasn’t the words that got to her, it was the way he
sang it, groaning like Bruce Springsteen into the mike and making it just break your heart.

It was kind of like a hymn in a way. It had that kind of sound, yet Lestat was right there in the middle of it, singing to her, and there was a steady drumbeat that went to her bones.

“OK, man, OK, you’re the only goddamn Dead guy I’ve got now, Lestat, keep singing!”

Five minutes to St. Louis, and there she was thinking about her mother again, how strange it had all been, how bad.

Baby Jenks hadn’t even told Killer or Davis why she was going home, though they knew, they understood.

Baby Jenks had to do it, she had to get her parents before the Fang Gang went out west. And even now she didn’t regret it. Except for that strange moment when her mother was dying there on the floor.

Now Baby Jenks had always hated her mother. She thought her mother was just a real fool, making crosses every day of her life with little pink seashells and bits of glass and then taking them to the Gun Barrel City Flea Market and selling them for ten dollars. And they were ugly, too, just real ready-made junk, those things with a little twisted-up Jesus in the middle made up of tiny red and blue beads and things.

But it wasn’t just that, it was everything her mother had ever done that got to Baby Jenks and made her disgusted. Going to church, that was bad enough, but talking the way she did to people so sweet and just putting up with her husband’s drinking and always saying nice things about everybody.

Baby Jenks never bought a word of it. She used to lie there on her bunk in the trailer thinking to herself, What really makes that lady tick? When is she going to blow up like a stick of dynamite? Or is she just too stupid? Her mother had stopped looking Baby Jenks in the eye years ago. When Baby Jenks was twelve she’d come in and said, “You know I done it, don’t you? I hope to God you don’t think I’m no virgin.” And her mother just faded out, like, just looked away with her eyes wide and empty and stupid, and went back to her work, humming like always as she made those seashell crosses.

One time some big city person told her mother that she made real folk art. “They’re making a fool of you,” Baby Jenks had said. “Don’t you know that? They didn’t buy one of those ugly things, did they? You know what those things look like to me? I’ll tell you what they look like. They look like great big dime-store earrings!”

No arguing. Just turning the other cheek. “You want some supper, honey?”

It was like an open and shut case, Baby Jenks figured. So she had headed out of Dallas early, making Cedar Creek Lake in less than an hour, and there was the familiar sign that meant her sweet little old home town:

WELCOME TO GUN BARREL CITY. WE SHOOT STRAIGHT WITH YOU
.

She hid her Harley behind the trailer when she got there, nobody home, and lay down for a nap, Lestat singing in the earphones, and the steam iron ready by her side. When her mother came in, slam bam, thank you, ma’am, she’d take her out with it.

Then the dream happened. Why, she wasn’t even asleep when it started. It was like Lestat faded out, and the dream pulled her down and snap:

She was in a place full of sunlight. A clearing on the side of a mountain. And these two twins were there, beautiful women with soft wavy red hair, and they knelt like angels in church with their hands folded. Lots of people around, people in long robes, like people in the Bible. And there was music, too, a creepy thumping and the sound of a horn playing, real mournful. But the worst part was the dead body, the burned body of the woman on a stone slab. Why, she looked like she’d been cooked, lying there! And on the plates, there was a fat shiny heart and a brain. Yep, sure thing, that was a heart and a brain.

Baby Jenks had woken up, scared. To hell with that. Her mother was standing in the door. Baby Jenks jumped up and banged her with the steam iron till she stopped moving. Really bashed in her head. And she should have been dead, but she wasn’t yet, and then that crazy moment came.

Her mother was lying there on the floor, half dead, staring, just like her daddy would be later. And Baby Jenks was sitting in the chair, one blue jean leg thrown over the arm, leaning on her elbow, or twirling one of her braids, just waiting, thinking about the twins in the dream sort of, and the body and the things on the plates, what was it all for? But mostly just waiting. Die, you stupid bitch, go on, die, I’m not slamming you again!

Even now Baby Jenks wasn’t sure what had happened. It was like her mother’s thoughts had changed, grown wider, bigger. Maybe she was floating up on the ceiling somewhere the way Baby Jenks had been when she nearly died before Killer saved her. But whatever was the cause, the thoughts were just amazing. Just flat out amazing. Like her mother knew everything! All about good and bad and how important it was to love, really love, and how it was so much more than just all the rules about don’t drink, don’t smoke, pray to Jesus. It wasn’t preacher stuff. It was just gigantic.

Her mother, lying there, had thought about how the lack of love in her daughter, Baby Jenks, had been as awful as a bad gene that made Baby Jenks blind and crippled. Yet it didn’t matter. It was going to be all right.
Baby Jenks would rise out of what was going on now, just as she had almost done before Killer had got to her, and there would be a finer understanding of everything. What the hell did that mean? Something about everything around us being part of one big thing, the fibers in the carpet, the leaves outside the window, the water dripping in the sink, the clouds moving over Cedar Creek Lake, and the bare trees, and they weren’t really so ugly as Baby Jenks had thought. No, the whole thing was almost too beautiful to describe suddenly. And Baby Jenks’ mother had always known about this! Seen it that way. Baby Jenks’ mother forgave Baby Jenks everything. Poor Baby Jenks. She didn’t know. She didn’t know about the green grass. Or the seashells shining in the light of the lamp.

Then Baby Jenks’ mother had died. Thank God! Enough! But Baby Jenks had been crying. Then she’d carried the body out of the trailer and buried it in back, real deep, feeling how good it was to be one of the Dead and so strong and able to just heft those shovels full of dirt.

Then her father came home. This one’s really for fun! She buried him while he was still alive. She’d never forget the look on his face when he came in the door and saw her with the fire ax. “Well, if it ain’t Lizzie Borden.”

Who the hell was Lizzie Borden?

Then the way his chin stuck out, and his fist came flying towards her, he was so sure of himself! “You little slut!” She split his goddamn forehead in half. Yeah, that part was great, feeling the skull cave—“Go down, you bastard!”—and so was shoveling dirt on his face while he was still looking at her. Paralyzed, couldn’t move, thinking he was a kid again on a farm or something in New Mexico. Just baby talk.
You son of a bitch, I always knew you had shit for brains. Now I can smell it!

But why the hell had she ever gone down there? Why had she left the Fang Gang?

If she’d never left them, she’d be with them now in San Francisco, with Killer and Davis, waiting to see Lestat on the stage. They might have even made the vampire bar out there or something. Leastways, if they had ever gotten there. If something wasn’t really really wrong.

And what the hell was she doing now backtracking? Maybe she should have gone along out west. Two nights, that was all that was left.

Hell, maybe she’d rent a motel room when the concert happened, so she could watch it on TV. But before that, she had to find some Dead guys in St. Louis. She couldn’t go on alone.

How to find the Central West End. Where was it?

This boulevard looked familiar. She was cruising along, praying no meddling cop would start after her. She’d outrun him of course, she always
did, though she dreamed of getting just one of those damn sons-a-bitches on a lonely road. But the fact was she didn’t want to be chased out of St. Louis.

Now this looked like something she knew. Yeah, this was the Central West End or whatever they called it and she turned off now to the right and went down an old street with those big cool leafy trees all around her. Made her think of her mother again, the green grass, the clouds. Little sob in her throat.

If she just wasn’t so damn lonesome! But then she saw the gates, yeah, this was the street. Killer had told her that Dead guys never really forget anything. Her brain would be like a little computer. Maybe it was true. These were the gates all right, great big iron gates, opened wide and coveted with dark green ivy. Guess they never really close up “a private place.”

She slowed to a rumbling crawl, then cut the motor altogether. Too noisy in this dark valley of mansions. Some bitch might call the cops. She had to get off to walk her bike. Her legs weren’t long enough to do it any other way. But that was OK. She liked walking in these deep dead leaves. She liked this whole quiet street.

Boy, if I was a big city vampire I’d live here too, she thought, and then far off down the street, she saw the coven house, saw the brick walls and the white Moorish arches. Her heart was really going!

Burnt up!

At first she didn’t believe it! Then she saw it was true all right, big streaks of black on the bricks, and the windows all blown out, not a pane of glass left anywhere. Jesus Christ! She was going crazy. She walked her bike up closer, biting her lip so hard she could taste her own blood. Just look at it. Who the hell was doing it! Teeny bits of glass all over the lawn and even in the trees so the whole place was kind of sparkling in a way that human beings probably couldn’t make out. Looked to her like nightmare Christmas decorations. And the stink of burning wood. It was just hanging there.