Punishment
"Mekare, for you evil lies and your discourse with demons' the Queen said, 'your tongue shall be torn from your mouth. And Maharet, for the evil which you have envisioned and sought to make us believe in, your eyes shall be plucked out! And all night, you shall be bound together, so that you may hear each other weeping, the one unable to speak, the other unable to see. And then at high noon tomorrow in the public place before the palace you shall be burnt alive for all the people to see."

 

Mekare's Vow
"Let the spirits witness; for theirs is the knowledge of the future - both what it would be, and what I will! You are the Queen of the Damned, that's what you are! Your only destiny is evil, as well you know! But I shall stop you, if I must come back from the dead to do it. At the hour of your greatest menace it is I who will defeat you! It is I who will bring you down. Look well upon my face, for you will see me again!"

 

Twins to vampires
"But as I knelt there, leaning my head against the wall, and reasoning that I must die, and must somehow find the courage for it, I realised that within the small confines of this cell, the unspeakable magic was being worked again. As the spirits railed against it, Mekare had made her choice. I reached out and felt these two forms, man and woman, melded like lovers; and as I struggled to part them, Khayman struck me, knocking me unconscious on the floor.
"Surely only a few minutes passed. Somewhere in the blackness, the spirits wept. The spirits knew the final outcome before I did. The winds died away; a hush fell in the blackness; the palace was still.
"My sister's cold hands touched me. I heard a strange sound like laughter; can those who have no tongue laugh? I had made no decision really; I knew only that all our lives we had been the same; twins and mirror images of each other; two bodies it seemed and one soul. And I was sitting now in hot close darkness of this little place, and I was in my sister's arms, and for the first time she was changed and we were not the same being; and yet we were. And then I felt her mouth against my throat; I felt her hurting me; and Khayman took his knife and did the work for her; and the swoon began."

 

Seperated
"But the King and the Queen feared to destroy our bodies. They had believed Mekare's account of the one great spirit, Amel, who infected all of us, and they feared that whatever pain we might feel would then be felt by them. Of course this was not so; but who could know it then?
"And so into the stone coffins we were put, as I've told you. One to be taken to the east and one to the west. The rafts had already been made to set us adrift in the great oceans. I had seen them even in my blindness; we were being carried away upon them; and I knew from the minds of my captors what they meant to do. I knew also that Khayman could not follow, for the march would go on by day as it had by night, and surely this was true.
"When I awoke, I was drifting on the breast of the sea. For ten nights the raft carried me as I've told you. Starvation and terror I suffered, lest the coffin sink to the bottom of the waters; lest I be buried alive forever, a thing that cannot die. But this did not happen. And when I came ashore at last on the eastern coast of lower Africa, I began my search for Mekare, crossing the continent to the west."

 

Never Reunited
"And the words I spoke were true. But I will come to the story of my family in a moment. Let me deal now with Akasha's one victory: that Mekare and I were never united again.
"For as I have told you, never in all my wanderings did I ever find a man, woman, or blood drinker who had gazed upon Mekare or heard her name. Through all the lands of the world I wandered, at one time or anoher, searching for Mekare. But she was gone from me as if the great western sea had swallowed her; and I was as half a being reaching out always for the only thing which can render me complete.

 

Khayman's Prophecy
"Mekare will come," Khayman said. The simplest smile animated his face. "Mekare will fulfill the curse. I made Mekare what she is, so that she would do it. It is our curse now."
Maharet smiled, but it was vastly different, her expression. It was sad, indulgent, and curiously cold. "Ah, that you believe is such symmetry, Khayman."
"And we'll die, all of us!" Eric said.
"There has to be a way to kill her," Gabrielle said coldly, "without killing us. We have to think on this, to be ready, to have some sort of plan."
"You cannot change the prophecy," Khayman whispered.
"Khayman, if we have learned anything," Marius said, "it is that there is no destiny. And if there is no destiny then there is no prophecy. Mekare comes here to do what she vowed to do; not mean that Akasha can't defend herself against Mekare. Don't you think that the Mother knows Mekare has risen? Don't you think the Mother has seen and heard her children's dreams?"
"Ah, but prophecies have a way of fulfilling themselves," Khayman said. "That's the magic of it. We all understood it in ancient times. The power of charms is the power of the will; you might say that we were all great geniuses of psychology in those dark days, that we could be slain by the power of another's designs. And the dreams, Marius, the dreams are but part of a great design."

 

Mekare Returns - The Twins Reunited
Maharet stood at the edge of the open doorway, and Mael was beside her. I hadn't even seen them move.
Then I saw who and what it was. The woman I'd glimpsed moving through the jungles, clawing her way out of the earth, walking the long miles on the barren plain. The other twin of the dreams I'd never understood! And now she stood framed in the dim light from the stairwell, staring straight at the distant figure of Akasha, who stood some thirty feet away with her back to the glass wall and the blazing fire.
Oh, but the sight of this one. Gasps came from the others, even from the old ones, from Marius himself.
A thin layer of soil encased her all over, even the rippling shape of her long hair. Broken, peeling, stained by the rain even, the mud still clung to her, clung to her naked arms and bare feet as if she were made of it, made of the earth itself. It made a mask of her face. And her eyes peered out of the mask, naked, rimmed in red. A rag covered her. a blanket filthy and torn, and tied with a hemp rope around her waist.
What impulse could make such a being cover herself, what tender human modesty had caused this living corpse to stop and make this simple garment, what suffering remnant of the human heart?
Beside her, staring at her. Maharet appeared to weaken suddenly all over as if her slender body were going to drop.
"Mekare!" she whispered.

 

The Consumption
"The funeral feast!" Marius cried. "The heart and the brain, one of you - take them into yourself. It is the only chance."
Yes, that was it. And they knew! No one had to tell them. They knew!
That was the meaning! And they'd all seen it, and they all knew. Even as my eyes were closing, I reliased it; and this lovely feeling deepened, this sense of completeness, of something finished at last. Of something known!
Then I was floating, floating in the ice cold darkness again as if I were in Akasha's arms, and we were rising into the stars.
A sharp crackling sound brought me back. Not dead yet, but dying. And where are those I love?
Fighting for life still, I tried to open my eyes; it seemed impossible. But then I saw them in the thickening gloom - the two of them, their red hair catching the hazy glow of the fire; the one holding the bloody brain in her mud-covered fingers, and the other, the dripping heart. All but dead they were, their own eyes glassy, their limbs moving as if through water. And Akasha stared forward still, her mouth open, the blood gushing from her shattered skull. Mekare lifted the brain to her mouth; Maharet put the heart in her other hand; Mekare took them both into herself.

 

Queen Of The Damned
And the twins turned around and stood up now, Maharet's arm around Mekare. And Mekare stared forward, expressionless, uncomprehending, the living statue; and Maharet said:
"Behold. The Queen of the Damned."

 

Extract from: "The Queen Of The Damned." - The third Vampire Chronicle
Pages: 479, 480, 483, 485, 486, 490, 502, 503, 530, 533, 534, 535