Blood and Gold by Anne Rice

mortal life to a distant grove in Gaul, where an ancient blood drinker, badly burnt, yet still imagining himself to be a god of the Sacred Grove, gave me the Dark Blood.”
    Marius stopped. “Do you follow my meaning?”
    “Yes,” said Thorne. “I remember those groves and the whispers among us of gods who had lived in them. You are saying that a blood drinker lived within the Sacred Oak.”
    Marius nodded. He went on.
    “ ‘Go to Egypt,’ he charged me, this badly burnt god, this wounded god, “and find the Mother. Find the reason for the terrible fire that has come from her, burning us far and wide.’ “
    “And this Mother,” said Thorne. “She was the Evil Queen who carried within her the Sacred Core.”
    “Yes,” said Marius, his steady blue eyes passing over Thorne gently. “She was the Evil Queen, friend, no doubt of it . . .
    “. . . But in that time, two thousand years ago, she was silent and still and seemed the most desperate of victims. Four thousand years old they were, the pair of them—she and her consort Enkil. And she did possess the Sacred Core, there was no doubt of it, for the terrible fire had come to all blood drinkers on the morning when an exhausted elder blood drinker had abandoned the King and Queen to the bright desert sun.
    “Blood drinkers all over the world—gods, creatures of the night, lamias, whatever they called themselves—had suffered agony, some obliterated by terrible flames, others merely darkened and left with a meager pain. The very oldest suffered little, the youngest were ashes.
    “As for the Sacred Parents—that is the kind thing to call them, I suppose—what had they done when the sun rose? Nothing. The Elder, severely burnt for all his efforts to make them wake or speak or run for shelter, found them as he had left them, unmovable, heedless, and so, fearing more suffering for himself he had returned them to a darkened chamber, which was no more than a miserable underground prison cell.”
    Marius stopped. He paused so completely it seemed that the memories were too hurtful to him. He was watching the flames as men do, and the flames did their reliable and eternal dance.
    “Please tell me,” said Thorne. “You found her, this Queen, you looked upon her with your own eyes that long ago?”
    “Yes, I found her,” Marius said softly. His voice was serious but not bitter. “I became her keeper. “Take us out of Egypt, Marius,’ that is what she said to me with the silent voice—what you call the Mind Gift, Thorne—never moving her lips.
    “And I took her and her lover Enkil, and sheltered them for two thousand years as they remained still and silent as statues.
    “I kept them hidden in a sacramental shrine. It was my life; it was my solemn commission.
    “Flowers and incense I put before them. I tended to their clothes. I wiped the dust from their motionless faces. It was my sacred obligation to do these things, and all the while to keep the secret from vagrant blood drinkers who might seek to drink their powerful blood, or even take them captive.”
    His eyes remained on the fire, but the muscles in his throat tightened, and Thorne could see the veins for a moment against the smoothness of his temples.
    “All the while,” Marius went on, “I loved her, this seeming divinity whom you so rightly call our Evil Queen; that’s perhaps the greatest lie I’ve ever lived. I loved her.”
    “How could you not love such a being?” Thorne asked. “Even in my sleep I saw her face. I felt her mystery. The Evil Queen. I felt her spell. And she had her silence to precede her. When she came to life it must have seemed as if a curse were broken, and she was at last released.”
    These words seemed to have a rather strong effect on Marius. His eyes moved over Thorne a bit coldly and then he looked back at the fire.
    “If I said something wrong I am sorry for it,” Thorne said. “I was only trying to understand.”
    “Yes, she was like a goddess,” Marius