Free The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice Page B

worse.
    “Yes,
ma chère
,” he said in a real nice voice, “all those coven houses, exactly. The East Coast has been burnt out like a circuit of lights. There is no answer at the coven house in Paris or the coven house in Berlin.”
    He took her arm as they headed for the front door.
    “Who the hell’s doing this!” she said.
    “Who the hell knows,
chérie?
It destroys the houses, the vampire bars, whatever rogues it finds. We have got to get out of here. Now make the bike go.”
    But she had come to a halt.
Something out here
. She was standing at the edge of the porch. Something. She was as scared to go on as she was to go back in the house.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked her in a whisper.
    How dark this place was with these great big trees and the houses, they all looked haunted, and she could hear something, something real low like . . . like something’s breathing. Something like that.
    “Baby Jenks? Move it now!”
    “But where are we going?” she asked. This thing, whatever it was, it was almost a sound.
    “The only place we can go. To him, darling, to the Vampire Lestat. He is out there in San Francisco waiting, unharmed!”
    “Yeah?” she said, staring at the dark street in front of her. “Yeah, right, to the Vampire Lestat.” Just ten steps to the bike. Take it, Baby Jenks. He was about to leave without her. “No, don’t you do that, you son of a bitch, don’t you touch my bike!”
    But it was a sound now, wasn’t it? Baby Jenks had never heard anything quite like it. But you hear a lot of things when you’re Dead. You hear trains miles away, and people talking on planes over your head.
    The Dead guy heard it. No, he heard her hearing it! “What is it?” he whispered. Jesus, he was scared. And now he heard it all by himself too.
    He pulled her down the steps. She stumbled and almost fell, but he lifted her off her feet and put her on the bike.
    The noise was getting really loud. It was coming in beats like music. And it was so loud now she couldn’t even hear what this Dead guy was saying to her. She twisted the key, turned the handles to give the Harley gas, and the Dead guy was on the bike behind her, but Jesus, the noise, she couldn’t think. She couldn’t even hear the engine of the bike!
    She looked down, trying to see what the hell was going on, was it running, she couldn’t even feel it. Then she looked up and she knew she was looking towards the thing that was sending the noise. It was in the darkness, behind the trees.
    The Dead guy had leaped off the bike, and he was jabbering away at it, as if he could see it. But no, he was looking around like a crazy man talking to himself. But she couldn’t hear a word. She just knew it was there, it was looking at them, and the crazy guy was wasting his breath!
    She was off the Harley. It had fallen over. The noise stopped. Then there was a loud ringing in her ears.
    “—anything you want!” the Dead guy 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