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"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 Orleans who 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."

Vittorio the Vampire
~ Anne Rice

What vampires form when they desire community. It is composed of three or more powerful vampires who agree to share a territory and not kill one another. Covens are actually rare in the history of the vampires, and they often involve battles over conformity or for supremacy. Vampires, Marius says, are solitary and distrustful, preferring to hunt alone in their own territory and to guard their privacy. They may have one or two companions to assuage loneliness, but usually not more than that.

"Vampires don't really like others of their kind," Lestat claims, "though their need for immortal companions is desperate."

As Louis says, "We could not bear to live alone."

The coven in Les Innocents is defined by the satanic rules that Armand had brought with him from the Roman coven. After Lestat shows the emptiness of their superstitions, the coven breaks up and reforms as the Theatre of the Vampires. They then attract vampires from all over Europe, but they use strict standards to maintain their theatrical integrity. The original coven evolves over a century into the Parisian coven that Louis and Claudia meet.

In QD, vampires meet in coven houses all over the world. These houses are places of refuge and safety, marking a line between the vampire "establishment" and the rogues. The houses, however, are destroyed when Akasha rises from her trance.

After Akasha's demise, the remaining vampires attempt at first to come together and set up rules of conduct, but they fail to form a coven and eventually move off in their own directions.

Night Island

The island that Armand and Daniel own off the coast of Miami. It is meant to be near Fisher Island, which can be viewed from South Point on South Beach.

Armand creates a tourist attraction there with shops, theatres, and resturants that are open only from dusk until dawn. Armand and Daniel have a villa on this island, which they modeled on the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii. Armand slips through its secret doorways to mingle with mortals as they browse in the shops.

After Akasha's demise, the surviving vampires temporarily congregate on Night Island. Lestat then describes the villa in more detail: its white rooms are framed in gray velvet curtains and filled with priceless art and oriental rugs. The villa becomes a temporary coven house, a point of anchoring for the vampires, and a sanctuary.

Vampire

A Preternatural, malignant creature transformed from a deceased mortal and sustaining itself on the blood of the living. Having once been human and in possession of consciousness, vampires are closer in kind to human beings than any other monsters. They exhibit the reality of an asocial inner life, and embody the horror of sociopathic conduct. As a symbol, vampires are typically associated with the Earth, darkness, the moon, and the abyss, all of which are identified as feminine. Shunning the sun involves losing the male element, thus making male vampires androgynous and female vampires doubly powerful.

The connection between vampires and their victims is through that of blood: both need it to survive. Blood symbolises life and kinship, and gives rise to many sexual connotations. It pumps just as hot when its owner is terrified as when sexually aroused, giving the vampire a double-edged allure. Although vampires threaten with death, their bite promises ecstasy and the possibility of immortality.

In folklore around the world, the vampire image evokes terror and inspires a wide variety of rituals mortals superstitiously practice to ward off or kill the vampire. Tales of vampires date back to ancient times, and are found across most world cultures. Among the earliest vampire images are the bloodthirsty goddess kali; the Egyptian deity Osiris; and Yama, the Tibetan Lord of Death. Other names for vampires include Nosferatu, Verdilak and Lamia.

The vampire myth originated before the development of monotheistic religions, and before the idea that the mind was separate from the body. Many ancient cultures believed in the human being's capacity for alternate mental states and that there were several types of souls. Often the creation of a vampire was believed to have occured as the result of the soul leaving the body after death: the higher soul departs for celestial realms but a lower part of the soul reenters the body at some point before decay sets in. The reanimated body, an image of the unchecked, imbalanced subconcious, thus free to pursue its evil course.

Vampire mythology has many universal features, although the most familiar to Western culture comes from Eastern Europe, where vampires developed from residual souls that returned to, or remained (depending on the version of the myth), with the corpse. The superstition that the soul wanted to reanimate the body to live again filtered into vampire fiction. Christianised, this animating soul then became a demonic force. Beginning with The Vampyre, Dr. Polidori's story of Lord Ruthven in the early nineteenth century, vampires tended to be aristocrats who lived in desolate places and whose bodies had been invaded by an evil spirit that animated them.

Bram Stoker's Dracula was the most famous of these early stories, and most film versions of Dracula stamped contemporary vampire fiction since the 1930's with stereotypical expectations of what the vampire should be like: vampires cast no reflection in a mirror, have razor-sharp canine teeth, dress in black ( often wearing a cape), are repelled by garlic and crucifixes, and can be destroyed by decapitation, fire, exposure to sunlight, or a stake (made of the same type of wood as Christ's cross) through the heart. Count Dracula could transform himself into a bat, wolf, or mist, and many vampire stories picked up on that image. Vampires in genre fiction also sleep in coffins (which are often filled with earth from their native ground), and rise nightly to drink blood from their victims. Sometimes vampires drain the victims of blood slowly; other times, they kill them instantly. Sometimes the bite of a vampire means certain immortality for each and every victim; at other times, the vampire performs a ritual with the bite, choosing only special mortals to become vampires.

Rice found this preternatural creature compelling: "I always thought the vampire was the most charming, magnetic monster of the whole supernatural pantheon." When she set out to write her own version of the vampire story, she was already aware of both the legends and the available fiction surrounding the vampire.

"When I was a child," she says, "there was a story going around in my family called 'The White Silk Dress.' [Actually, "Dress of White Silk" by Richard Matheson.] It was told from the point of view of a child vampire. I thought it was quite wonderful and never forgot it. I wanted to get into the vampire. I've always been interested in the point of view of the people right in the centre of it all."

Although Rice never finished Stoker's Dracula, she had read enough to realise that his presentation was different from the way she understood vampires. He emphasised the vampire's foul, animalian qualities, while Rice viewed vampires as sharing some traits with angels and saints. She felt they would - and should - have a refined spiritual aura about them: "I always saw vampires as sort of romantic and abstract. I saw them as angels going in the other direction. They had beome finely tuned imitations of human beings imbued with this evil spirit, and the spirit was not material. I think they were presented that way in some of the old movies - in Dracula's Daughter, in particular."

As a result, Rice's vampires retain few of the typical genre trappings (except for those, like Armand's coven, who cling to empty superstition). While they can be destroyed by fire, some can and do survive exposure to the sun. A stake through the heart cannot destroy them. They can see themselves in the mirror, because they take up physical space and thre is no God to prohibit their reflection by denying them a soul. Many of them sleep in coffins, but it is not necessary, and none worry about getting the "right" dirt. They grow sharp teeth with which to drink blood, but they have no fear of churches, crucifixes, or other religious artifacts.

Although Rice's vampires represent the maximum proximity between human and monster, they possess certain features that reveal right away what they are: luminous white skin, gleaming fingernails, seemingly impossible speed, incredible flexibility, exaggerated facial expressions, and an unnatural gleam in the eye from reflecting too many colours.

Victims are attracted to Rice's vampires because they also posess the special allure described in earlier vampire fiction. They offer intimacy, power over death to those they chose to make immortal, and sensual rapture. Sinking their teeth into a victim's neck provides immensely erotic sensations to both parites (although vampires like Louis, who feel guilty over this pleasure, take their victims more quickly). Armand believes that the victims who surrender most easily are Those Who Want to Die.

The vampire mythos Rice developed in the Chronicles is inspired by the fact that vampire lore can be traced back to early gods and goddesses like Osiris and Dionysus. Their ritual pracitces used blood sacrifices to symbolise mastery over life. Yet, with the rise of Christianity, the priests transformed these vegetation gods (and vampires along with them) into demons, proclaiming that since blood held the magical quality of life that only Christ could sanction, stealing it was an act of sacrilege. Thus, the vampire became an evil creature of the night.

But through associating the vampires with ancient gods and goddesses, Rice links the Egyptian mythologies (Osiris) to the Greek and Roman (Dionysus or Bacchus), both of which foreshadowed the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The vampire progenitors, Akasha and Enkil, are Egyptian royalty who align themselves with the worshop of Osiris. They are not invaded by the Devil but by a spirit who wants to experience the movement of flesh; it enters them through their bodily wounds. As an entity of vast dimension, it urges Akasha and Enkil, via an unquenchable thirst, to make other vampires to share in the burden of getting blood for it. The spirit then invades whoever is given the blood, changing their body's cellular structure and joining all vampires together into a single network. In Rice's version, vampires are not satanic, then, but merely the result of an accidental fusion of spirit with flesh that provides extraordinary powers along with immortality, and craves blood for self-renewal.

Unlike the purely evil monsters of nineteenth-century fiction, Rice's vampires possess human qualities. They experience their own unconcious compulsions, and feel lonely, anguished, guilty, compassionate, angry, bored, sad, and more. They seek love and companionship, and some desire to find ways to do good with their powers. They are able to love whomever they chose without the restrictions of social propriety, because they are outside society's boundaries. Their senses are magnified to the point where all of life takes on a precious glow. In short, the vampires of the Chronicles retain the romantic image of the vampire as a dangerous creature of the shadows, but add to it the power of transcending gender and of retaining human emotions and psychological conflicts.

For example, David Talbot fears that vampires lose their humanity by losing the balance between their intellect and their moral sensitivity. Their moral development stops while their intellect continues to grow. He fears that this will cause his own demise. These latter qualities are the result of Rice's personal intrigue with the figure of the vampire. Familiar with films that allowed the potential for vampires to embody more (and less) than pure evil, she probed the vampire image for its deeper layers.

"That is what interests me: the idea that these characters are tragic heroes and heroines, that they have a conscience. They have hearts, they have souls, they suffer loneliness, and they know what they're doing. They don't want to be doing it [killing], and yet it's their nature. I wanted to put myself in the vampire's skin and see though the vampire's eyes, and aks the questions I felt were inevitable for a vampire to ask.

The horror of the vampire is that they're locked in the physical. They can't hearken to the lessons of the physical because they have to kill - and that betrays the lesson that life is meaningful. The vampire is outside life and sees the beauty of life, yet he has to kill to survive. I think that is a powerful metaphor for the compromises we make every day."

Vampire Powers (abilities)

The vampires in the Chronicles posses many of the attributes of traditional genre vampires, but with their additional powers also defy the stereotype. Vampires' powers increase with age, and an older vampire who makes a child passes on his or her power (although making more than one child over a brief period of time results in successively weaker children). In fact, Armand's satanic coven has rules against older vampires making children for the very reason that a young vampire could thus be more powerful than members of the coven who have been in existence longer.

The powers Rice's vampires possess fall into one of three categories: physical, mental or emotional.

Physical Powers Physically, the vampires are strong: Lestat claims he can bend a copper penny double; Khayman can walk through plaster walls or hurl a car.

As part of their strength, they can project the sound of their voices to an ear-shattering level, as Lestat discovered onstage at Renaud's. Vampires can also speak too low for the human ear to detect.

They possess great speed of movement. The boy reporter thinks Louis's arm is abnormally long due to the quickness of his reach. Louis also uses his speed when he talks with Babette; he wants it to seem like he actually disappears at the end of their conversation, so that she will think he is a guardian angel.

As the vampires age, their body cells harden and whitten; they seem like marble to the younger ones. Nevertheless, thier bodies remain flexible, light and dexterous. They can jump to great heights, and some can even levitate and fly around the world. A few of the vampires also practice astral projection, although Lestat does not enjoy this activity, for it makes him feel unconnected to the Earth.

Vampires also have the ability to heal very quickly. Khayman discovers, after sticking a knife into his hand, that the wounds close so fast that he has to open them again just to pry the knife out. Akasha's blood heals Enkil, when his arm is cut off by the conspiritors, and Lestat, when he is left for dead in the swamps. The Fang Gang use their blood to heal the puncture wounds on thier victims. Lestat also heals after an exposure to the desert sun that would have turned less powerful vampires to ashes.

Mental Powers Vampires possess metanormal perception, a heightened sense of pleasure and pain, and hyperdimensional consciousness: they can hear mortal voices of anguish from around the world, as well as listen in on one another's thoughts. This experience of the sensory world increases their appreciation for life, and magnifies the sensual aspects of the kill, making it an orgastic experience. When vampires look at art, they can see the entire process that created it. Similarly, they perceive how insubstantial life is because they can see bodies as particles of heat and light.

Their powers of concentration allow them to experience the sensory qualities of any given moment to a degree beyond that of any mortal. These powers also allow them to read with great speed, pick up other languages easily, and mimic sounds. Lestat learns to read without being taught, and he can imitate the sounds of the instruments that Satan's Night Out plays. Possessing extremely acute vision, they can see in the dark and perceive the spiritual depth that is buried in mortal flesh. Primarily, it is the will of each particular vampire that determines the extent of their mental powers; those who have more confidence and a willingness to explore their powers develop them the most.

Vampires can read minds to a fairly accurate degree, except for those of their own children or minds that are skillfully cloaked against them. Being able to read the minds of mortals allows them to manipulate their victims and, in Armand's case, acquire great wealth. They can also hypnotise and scramble the thoughts of mortals, as when Marius takes a drink from a victim and makes it so that she will not remember it. After Jesse stumbles upon Mael and Maharet in their daytime sleep, Maharet gives her instead a vision of falling asleep by the stream; it is only years later, with Jesse's attempts to remember, that the illusion wears off. Armand also gives Daniel an illusory vision of the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, to give a highly sensual context to Daniel's transformation. When speaking with one another and when giving their powerful blood, they can provide full-blown images of their past experiences, as Armand does when he shows his story to Lestat and Gabrielle. Lestat does the same when telling Armand his experience of talking with Memnoch.

Vampires can move objects at will, such as when they open doors or locks, or when shoving another vampire away without touching him.

Because the vampires are so intimately connected via the spirit Amel, they possess joint awareness of one another. Their sensitivity to this increases with age, although it is not always consistent nor easily controlled. Since she is aware of all her children, Akasha knows exactly where to go when whe wants to kill them. Armand can perceive the mental impulses of other vampires, although the meaning behind them is not always clear. The vampires can also cloak themselves and their whereabouts from the prying minds of others, as Louis, Lestat and Gabrielle sometimes do to protect themselves.

One other mental power, that only Khayman mentions, is the ability to superimpose into contemporary photographs images of people from other eras he has known. "In his [Khayman's] photograph from Rome, there were Roman people in tunics and sandals superimposed upon the modern versions in their thick ungraceful clothing."

Emotional Powers Able to participate in transgender love, the vampires can bond more intimately than they could as mortals. Lestat and Gabrielle, for example, become more than mother and son: they are also lovers, peers, and companions. Yet vampires also feel loneliness more keenly, as a description of Khayman illustrates: "He could feel human pain with an eerie and frightening perfection. He knew what it meant to love, and to be lonely, ah, yes, he knew that above all things." For Louis, too, loneliness and despair are magnified with the feeling that his "life span" now stretches out into endless nights of guilt and need: eternity seems a cold, dark wasteland.

Yet while pain is more intense for vampires, so also is ecstasy. They love their victims intensely: they can see the precious life with greater appreciation than they did as mortals, because their experience of it is so sensual and provides the greatest physical and emotional satisfaction they have ever known. Louis claims that sex as a mortal is a pale shadow compared to the experience of the kill.

While vampires can blend easily among mortals in cities like Paris or New Orleans, they also feel the isolation of their invisibility: they are outsiders to the human race. Nevertheless, as outsiders, they possess a unique perspective that allows them to appreciate life more than they did as mortals. They can see everything as more vivid, evocative, and spiritual. Indeed, Lestat thinks that vampires possess a God's-eye-view and thus a deeper understanding of life.

The Vampire Companion ~ Katherine Ramsland