The Mummy

The Mummy

By: Anne Rice

THE CAMERA flashes blinded him for a moment. If only he could get the photographers away. But they had been at his side for months now-ever since the first artifacts had been found in these barren hills, south ofCairo. It was as if they too had known. Something about to happen. After all these years, Lawrence Stratford was on to a major find. And so they were there with the cameras, and the smoking flashes. They almost knocked him off balance as he made his way into the narrow rough-hewn passage towards the letters visible on the half-uncovered marble door. The twilight seemed to darken suddenly. He could see the letters, but he couldn’t make them out. “Samir,” he cried. “I need light.” “Yes, Lawrence.” At once the torch exploded behind him, and in a flood of yellow illumination, the slab of stone was wonderfully visible. [download]

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The Feast of All Saints

The Feast of All Saints

By: Anne Rice

One morning inNew Orleans, in that part of the Rue Ste. Anne before it crosses Conde and becomes the lower boundary of the Place d’Armes, a young boy who had been running full tilt down the middle of the street stopped suddenly, his chest heaving, and began to deliherately and obviously follow a tall woman. This was the street in which he lived, though he was blocks from home, and the woman lived in it also. So a numher of people on the way to market-or lounging in the doors of their shops to garner a little breeze knew the pair of them and thought as they glanced at the boy, that is Marcel Ste. Marie, Cecile’s son, and what is he doing now? These were the riverfront streets of the 1840s, packed with immigrants, where the worlds met over the back fence, and gallery to gallery; yet despite the throng, and the wilderness of masts above the levee markets, the French Quarter was then as forever a small town. And the woman was famous in it. [download]

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The Road to Cana

The Road to Cana

By: Anne Rice

Angels sang at his birth. Magi from the East brought gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They gave these gifts to him, and to his mother, Mary, and the man, Joseph, who claimed to be his father. In the Temple, an old man gathered the babe in his arms. The old man said to the Lord, as he held the babe, “A light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.” My mother told me those stories. That was years and years ago. Is it possible that Christ the Lord is a carpenter in the town of Nazareth, a man past thirty years of age, and one of a family of carpenters, a family of men and women and children that fill ten rooms of an ancient house, and, that in this winter of no rain, of endless dust, of talk of trouble in Judea, Christ the Lord sleeps in a worn woolen robe, in a room with other men, beside a smoking brazier? Is it possible that in that room, asleep, he dreams? [download]

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Violin

Violin

By: Anne Rice

What I seek to do here perhaps cannot be done in words. Perhaps it can only be done in music. I want to try to do it in words. I want to give to the tale the architecture which only narrative can provide -the beginning, the middle and the end-the charged unfolding events in phrases faithfully reflecting their impact upon the writer. You should not need to know the composers I mention often in these pages: Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky-the wild strummings of the bluegrass fiddlers or the eerie music of Gaelic violins. My words should impart the very essence of the sound to you. If not, then there is something here which cannot be really written. But since it’s the story in me, the story I am compelled to unfold life, my tragedy, my triumph and its price I have no choice but to attempt this record. [download]  

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Pandora

Pandora

By: Anne Rice

Not twenty minutes has passed since you left me here in the cafe, since I said No to your request, that I would never write out for you the story of my mortal life, how I became a vampire – how I came upon Marius only years after he had lost his human life. Now here I am with your notebook open, using one of the sharp pointed eternal ink pens you left me, delighted at the sensuous press of the black ink into the expensive and flawless white paper. Naturally, David, you would leave me something elegant, an inviting page. This notebook bound in dark varnished leather, is it not, tooled with a design of rich roses, thornless, yet leafy, a design that means only Design in the final analysis but bespeaks an authority. What is written beneath this heavy and handsome book cover will count, sayeth this cover. The thick pages are ruled in light blue you are practical, so thoughtful, and you probably know I almost never put pen to paper to write anything at all. [download]

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Vittorio The Vampire

Vittorio The Vampire 

By: Anne Rice

I have, however, nothing whatsoever to do with the “Coven of the Articulate, ” that band of strange romantic vampires in and from the Southern New World city of New Orleanswho have regaled you already with so many chronicles and tales. I know nothing of those heroes of macabre fact masquerading as fiction. I know nothing of their enticing paradise in the swamplands of Louisiana. You will find no new knowledge of them in these pages, not even, hereafter, a mention. I have been challenged by them, nevertheless, to write the story of my own beginnings the fable of my making and to cast this fragment of my life in book form into the wide world, so to speak, where it may come into some random or destined contact with their well-published volumes. [download]  

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Belinda

Belinda 

By: Anne Rice

“Who was she?” That was the first thought that came into my mind when I saw her in the bookstore. Jody, the publicist, pointed her out. “Catch your devoted fan over there,” she said. “Goldilocks.” Goldilocks, yes, she had hair like that, absolutely right, down to her shoulders. But who was she really? Photographing her, painting her. Reaching under her short little Catholic school plaid skirt and touching the silk of her naked thighs, yes, I thought of all that, too, I have to admit it. I thought of kissing her, seeing if her face was as soft as it looked-babyflesh. Yes, it was there from the start, especially once she gave me the age old inviting smile and her eyes became for a moment a woman’s eyes. [download]

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Exit to Eden

Exit to Eden 

By: Anne Rice

At The Club they call me the Perfectionist, and it is no small compliment to be called that in a place like The Club, where everyone is after a perfection of sorts, where everyone is striving, and the striving is part of the pleasure involved. I’ve been at The Club since it opened. I helped create it, establish its principles, approve its earliest members and its earliest slaves. I laid down the rules and the limits. And I imagined and created most of the equipment that is used there today. I even designed some of the bungalows and the gardens, the morning swimming pool and fountains. I decorated over a score of the suites myself. Its many imitators make me smile. There is no real competition for The Club. The Club is what it is because it believes in itself. And its glamour and its terror evolve from that. This is a story of something that happened at The Club. [download]

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Servant of The Bones

Servant of The Bones

By: Anne Rice

Perhaps he approved that I had reached the venerable age of sixty-five, and still wrote and worked night and day like a young man, with no intentions of retiring ever from the school where I taught, though I had now and then to get completely away from it. So it was no haphazard choice that made him climb the steep forested mountains, in the snow, on foot, carrying only a curled newsmagazine in his hand, his tall form protected by a thick mass of curly black hair that grew long below his shoulders a true protective mantle for a man’s head and neck-and one of those double-tiered and flaring winter coats that only the tall of stature and the romantic of heart can wear with aplomb or the requisite charming indifference. By the light of the fire, he appeared at once a kind young man, with huge black eyes and thick prominent brows, a small thick nose, and a large cherub’s mouth, his hair dappled with snow, the wind blowing his coat. [download]

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Taltos

Taltos

By: Anne Rice 

It had snowed all day. As the darkness fell, very close and quickly, he stood at the window looking down on the tiny figures inCentral Park. A perfect circle of light fell on the snow beneath each lamp. Skaters moved on the frozen lake, though he could not make them out in detail. And cars pushed sluggishly over the dark roads. To his right and his left, the skyscrapers of midtown crowded near him. But nothing came between him and the park, except, that is, for a jungle of lower buildings, rooftops with gardens, and great black hulking pieces of equipment, and sometimes even pointed roofs. He loved this view; it always surprised him when others found it so unusual, when a workman coming to fix an office machine would volunteer that he’d never seen New Yorklike this before. Sad that there was no marble tower for everyone; that there was no series of towers, to which all the people could go, to look out at varying heights. [download]

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Lasher

Lasher 

By: Anne Rice 

In the beginning was the voice of Father. “Emaleth!” whispering close to her mother’s belly while her mother slept. And then singing to her, the long songs of the past. Songs of the Glen of Donnelaith and of the castle, and of where they would sometime come together, and how she would be born knowing all that Father knew. It is our way, he said to her in the fast language, which others could not understand. To others it sounded like humming, or whistling. It was their secret tongue, for they could hear syllables which ran too fast for the others to grasp. They could sing out to each other. Emaleth could almost do it, almost speak “Emaleth, my darling, Emaleth, my daughter, Emaleth, my mate.” Father was waiting for her. She had to grow fast and grow strong for Father. When the time came, Mother had to help her. She had to drink Mother’s milk. Mother slept. Mother cried. Mother dreamed. Mother was sick. And when Father and Mother quarreled, the world trembled. Emaleth knew dread. [download]

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The Witching Hour

The Witching Hour 

By: Anne Rice

The doctor woke up afraid. He had been dreaming of the old house inNew Orleansagain. He had seen the woman in the rocker. He’d seen the man with the brown eyes. And even now in this quiet hotel room aboveNew York Cityhe felt the old alarming disorientation. He’d been talking again with the brown-eyed man. Yes, help her. No, this is just a dream. I want to get out of it. The doctor sat up in bed. No sound but the faint roar of the air conditioner. Why was he thinking about it tonight in a hotel room in the Parker Meridien? For a moment he couldn’t shake the feeling of the old house. He saw the woman again -her bent head, her vacant stare. He could almost hear the hum of the insects against the screens of the old porch. And the brown-eyed man was speaking without moving his lips. A waxen dummy infused with life No. Stop it. [download]

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The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty 

By: Anne Rice

THE PRINCE had all his young life known the story of Sleeping Beauty, cursed to sleep for a hundred years, with her parents, the King and Queen, and all of the Court, after pricking her finger on a spindle. But he did not believe it until he was inside the castle. Even the bodies of those other Princes caught in the thorns of the rose vines that covered the walls had not made him believe it. They had come believing it, true enough, but he must see for himself inside the castle. Careless with grief for the death of his father, and too powerful under his mother’s rule for his own good, he cut these awesome vines at their roots, and immediately prevented them from ensnaring him. It was not his desire to die so much as to conquer. And picking his way through the bones of those who had failed to solve the mystery, he stepped alone into the great banquet hall. [download]

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Beauty’s Punishment

Beauty’s Punishment

By: Anne Rice

Some, in desperation, glanced back at the high towers of the darkened castle. But no one was awake, it seemed, to hear their cries. And a thousand obedient slaves slept within, on the silken beds of the Slaves’ Hall or in their Masters’ and Mistresses’ sumptuous chambers, unconcerned for those incorrigible ones who were borne away now in the wobbling, high-railed cart, towards the village auction. The Commander of the Patrol smiled to himself as he saw Princess Beauty, the Crown Prince’s dearest slave, press towards the tall, heavily muscled figure of Prince Tristan. She had been the last to be loaded into the cart, and what a lovely slave she was, he mused, her long, straight, golden hair hanging loose down her back, her little mouth straining to kiss Tristan in spite of the leather bit that gagged her. And how could the disobedient. [download]

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Beauty’s Release

Beauty’s Release 

By: Anne Rice

But something had changed. As soon as I opened my eyes, I knew we were close to land. Even in the shadowy silence of the cabin, I could smell the living things of the land. And so the journey is coming to an end, I thought. And we will finally know what awaits us in this new captivity in which we are destined to be even lower, and more abject, than before. I was as relieved as I was frightened, as curious as I was filled with dread. And by the light of the one night lantern, I saw Tristan lying awake, his face tense as he peered into the darkness. He too knew that the voyage was almost ended. The naked Princesses still slept, however, looking like exotic beasts in their golden cages. The piquant little Beauty was a yellow flame in the gloom, Rosalynd’s curly black hair draped her white back to the curve of her plump little buttocks. And above, the long, delicate-boned Elena lay on her back, her straight brown hair combed out over her pillow. [download]

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Blood Canticle

Blood Canticle

By: Anne Rice

I WANTto be a saint. I want to save souls by the millions. I want to do good far and wide. I want to fight evil! I want my life-sized statue in every church. I’m talking six feet tall, blond hair, blue eyes. Wait a second. Do you know who I am? I’m thinking maybe you’re a new reader and you’ve never heard of me. Well, if that’s the case, allow me to introduce myself, which I absolutely crave doing at the beginning of every one of my books. I’m the Vampire Lestat, the most potent and lovable vampire ever created, a supernatural knockout, two hundred years old but fixed forever in the form of a twenty-year-old male with features and figure you’d die for-and just might. I’m endlessly resourceful, and undeniably charming. Death, disease, time, gravity, they mean nothing to me. [download]

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Blackwood Farm

Blackwood Farm

By: Anne Rice

If you find this letter in your house in the Rue Royale, and I do sincerely think you will find it you’ll know at once that I’ve broken your rules. I know thatNew Orleansis off limits to Blood Hunters, and that any found there will be destroyed by you. And unlike many a rogue invader whom you have already dispatched, I understand your reasons. You don’t want us to be seen by members of the Talamasca. You don’t want a war with the venerable Order of Psy chic Detectives, both for their sake and ours. But please, I beg you, before you come in search of me, read what I have to say. My name is Quinn. I’m twenty-two years old, and have been a Blood Hunter, as my Maker called it, for slightly less than a year. I’m an orphan now, as I see it, and it is to you that I turn for help. But before I make my case, please understand that I know the Talamasca. [download]

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Blood and Gold

Blood and Gold 

By: Anne Rice

HIS NAME WAS THORNE. In the ancient language of the runes, it had been longer Thornevald. But when he became a blood drinker, his name had been changed to Thorne. And Thorne he remained now, centuries later, as he lay in his cave in the ice, dreaming. When he had first come to the frozen land, he had hoped he would sleep eternally. But now and then the thirst for blood awakened him and using the Cloud Gift, he rose into the air, and went in search of the Snow Hunters. He fed off them, careful never to take too much blood from any one so that none died on account of him. And when he needed furs anc boots he took them as well, and returned to his hiding place. These Snow Hunters were not his people. They were dark of skin and had slanted eyes, and they spoke a different tongue, but he had known them in the olden times when he had traveled with his uncle into the land to the East for trading. [download]

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Merrick

Merrick 

By: Anne Rice 

“WHY DO You ask me to do this thing?” She sat across the marble table from me, her back to the open doors of the cafe. I struck her as a wonder. But my requests had distracted her. She no longer stared at me, so much as she looked into my eyes. She was tall, and had kept her dark-brown hair loose and long all her life, save for a leather barrette such as she wore now, which held only her forelocks behind her head to flow down her back. She wore gold hoops dangling from her small earlobes, and her soft white summer clothes had a gypsy flare to them, perhaps because of the red scarf tied around the waist of her full cotton skirt. “And to do such a thing for such a being?” she asked warmly, not angry with me, no, but so moved that she could not conceal it, even with her smooth compelling voice. [download]

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The Vampire Armand

The Vampire Armand 

By: Anne Rice

THEY SAID a child had died in the attic. Her clothes had been discovered in the wall. I wanted to go up there, and to lie down near the wall, and be alone. They’d seen her ghost now and then, the child. But none of these vampires could see spirits, really, at least not the way that I could see them. No matter. It wasn’t the company of the child I wanted. It was to be in that place. Nothing more could be gained from lingering near Lestat. I’d come. I’d fulfilled my purpose. I couldn’t help him. The sight of his sharply focused and unchanging eyes unnerved me, and I was quiet inside and full of love for those nearest me-my human children, my dark-haired little Benji and my tender willowy Sybelle butI was not strong enough just yet to take them away. I left the chapel. [download]

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