The Queen of the Damned (1988), a Vampire Sequel by Anne Rice: summary

The 573-page book was published by A Time Warner in 2002, in London, the twentieth published since 1988. The third book of vampire sequence contains fantasy, murder, love, sex (homosexuality), mercy and merciless, ancient Egypt’s history, and greedy. Setting is in early eighties and six thousand years earlier.

The story follows the Vampire Lestat, a super rock star, who reveals the vampire’s history to the mortals through his autobiography and his music. He awakes the vampire first parents: the Mother, Akasha and the Father, Enkil, from their six years stillness. The idea brings disaster, Akasha, the Queen of the Damned, has killed mortals and immortals mercilessly. The persecution of the red-haired twins from the past, has made all of vampires have troubling dreams, then they discovers that the tale of the Legend of the Twins is real. It is related to Akasha. Not only a singer, but Lestat is also a writer, he just wrote all that story and it was real events in his new book with a title the Queen of the Damned.

The Queen of the Damned (1988), a Vampire Sequel by Anne Rice: summary

Now Lestat had become a writer, and he wrote a book with title the Queen of the Damned, and it was truly events, after his life also has written in Interview with Vampire, everybody knew him from that book both mortal and immortal. He was now the vampire who became a super rock star, the one who wrote the autobiography. He had blond hair and gray eyes, and the insatiable desire for visibility and fame. He wanted to be a symbol of evil in a shining century that didn’t have any place for literal evil that he was.

He just made his debut in San Francisco, his first live concert. He was alive two hundred years ago, he set out for Paris in 1780s to be an actor. Two hundred years made him wiser. The moment of triumph before fifteen thousand creaming mortal fans, and two of his greatest immortal loves were with him. Gabrielle and Louis was his fledglings and paramours from whom he had been separated for too many dark years.

The vampire first parents: Enkil and Akasha, rulers of the valley of the Nile before it was ever called Egypt. They were the first bloodsuckers on the face of the earth. The vampires were descended from this venerable pair, all their delicious and indispensable powers resided in one or other of their ancient body. If Akasha and Enkil should ever walk hand in hand into a furnace, they should all burnt them. Crushed them to glittering dust, and all the vampires were annihilated. The pair hadn’t moved in over fifty centuries. Except of course Lestat claimed to have wakened them both by playing the violin at the foot of the shrine. After all, they were his King and his Queen, the Father and the Mother of all the vampires. They had reigned without challenge for two millennia.

Enkil as he had been for two thousand years, the black hair in long tiny plaits, hanging to his shoulders. The broad gold collar lying against his smooth, hairless chest, the linen of his kilt immaculate with its pleats, the rings still on his motionless fingers. Akasha, the Queen, was white, hard, and opaque as it had always been. Her cheek shone like pearl as she smiled, her dark eyes moist. After Lestat woke them up Akasha was gone.

Those Who Must Kept, Marius (fame blood sucker from Roman’s era) and other names from the tale might not exist, but Lestat was real, as real as anything immortal knew, and the Vampire Lestat was greedy fiend risk. They had kept all the time in a nice private crypt.

Louis, the gentle one, with the black hair and the green eyes, whose steps made a careless sound when he walked, who even whistled to himself in the dark streets so that mortals heard him coming. In fact, nothing changed much at all with this elegant and sensuous creature who had caused such a little tumult with his story in Interview with the Vampire. Except that he was waiting for Lestat, He had troubling dreams; he was fearful for Lestat. After all he did not make a vampire child. And a vampire of his own mother, Gabrielle, who for years was his loving companion. Louis was his philosopher. Lestat has dared reveal vampire’s history to the world, as he parades his supernatural endowments before the mortal.

Baby Jenks and the Fang Gang

Baby Jenks had been only fourteen when they’d done it to her, made her one of the Vampire. She rode her Harley to seventy miles an hour, the wind freezing her naked white hands. She hadn’t combed out her hair since it happened.

She had seen redheaded twins in the dream, the two pretty ladies, and all these terrible things would go down. It was a dream had bothered her, a dream she kept having every night right before she opened her eyes. She was lonely she was going out of her head. The rock music of the Vampire Lestat was blaring through the earphones.

The Fang Gang hadn’t met her south of Dallas as they had promised. She had waited two nights by the graveyard, then she had known something was really, really wrong. They would never have headed to California without her. They were going to see vampire Lestat on the stage in San Francisco. She knew the Fang Gang was in deep trouble,   Killer and Davis would never have dumped her. Killer loved her, she would have died in Detroit if it hadn’t been for Killer.

She had bleeding to death, the doctor had done it to her all right, the baby was gone and all, but she was going to die to, and she was so high on heroin. Killer had come into the room from up, and from up where she could see that he was a Dead guy. He just looked kind of ordinary, Black jeans, black hair, real deep eyes. He had “Fang Gang” written on the back of his leather jacket. Killer and Davis, and Tim and Russ, had taken her to their house. She had been really happy with the Fang Gang since they left Detroit. Tim and Russ were OK guys, but Killer and Davis were her special friends and they were the leaders of the Fang Gang. Baby Jenks had been having a ball. She could handle a full-sized Harley, carry a dead body with one arm, leap over the hood of a car.

Davis was a black Dead guy and one damned good-looking black Dead guy, as Baby Jenks saw it. He decked himself out in all the gold he could find. He stole the gold rings and watches and chains and things off the victims. He loved danced.

The Dead guys were spreading all over and they were going together Vampire Lestat the night of his concert. They were reading his book like the Bible. They were using all that language he used, Dark Gift, Dark Trick. Vampire Lestat wanted to be hanging around with the Fang Gang. He was a rock star, had his own limousine. He was adorable-looking guy. Baby Jenks love the Vampire Lestat music, especially that one about Those Who Must Be Kept- the Egyptian King and Queen- Enkil and Akasha.

The Goddess Pandora

She was a tall creature, clad in black, with only her eyes uncovered. Frost covered her face, her eyelids. A deep shiver of alarm had passed through her nights go, in the crowded stinking street of old Delhi (a city in India), and every hour or so since had repeated itself, as if the earth had begun tremble as its core.

At certain moments, she was sure that the Mother and the Father must be waking. Those Who Must Be Kept had stirred at last. Nothing less than such as a resurrection could transmit the powerful yet vague signal – Akasha and Enkil rising after six thousand years of horrifying stillness, from the throne they started. She listened for other immortal voices, the dead, overcrowded city, the rock star, the Vampire Lestat. She saw Marius, her maker, not as he was now, but then a young immortal burning with a supernatural secret.

And then she saw Azim in the middle of the crush. His dark bronze skin was moist and gleaming in the light of the candles, his head bound in a black silk turban, his long robes stained with a mingling of mortal and immortal blood. His black eyes, ringed in kohl, were enormous.  The maddened crowd seemed to expand as its movements grew more frantic.

The Story of Daniel, the Devil’s minion, the boy from interview with the Vampire

Daniel Malloy was his name, he was thirty-two, though he looked younger, a perennial student. He called Armand, a friend of Louis in the Interview with Vampire. He also saw the twins in his dreams. In his pocket there was no money, only an old crumpled royalty check for the book the Interview with Vampire, which he had written under a pseudonym over twelve years ago. Another world, that, when he had been a young reporter, roaming bars of the world with his tape recorder. He just read the autobiography of the Vampire Lestat.

In mute fascination, Daniel had watched that little clip on MTV portraying Armand as the coven master of old vampires beneath the Paris cemetery, presiding over demonic rituals until the Vampire Lestat, the eighteenth-century iconoclast, had destroyed the Old Ways. Finally Armand arrived in his room, he asked Armand to make him as a vampire, but Armand left him.

In a cheap hotel only half a block from the ruins of ancient Pompeii, he had spent his hours reading, writing, and trying to define what his glimpse of supernatural had done to him. Then Armand had returned. A young boy in dirty jeans and worn denim jacket was now a secret lover for Armand. They loved each other. Armand would sleep when the sun rose but night were Daniel’s. Men and women fell in love with Armand. In fact, Armand’s power to seduce was almost beyond his control.

In New York they went tearing to museum opening. They went to night classes in literature, philosophy, art history, and politics. They studied biology, astronomy. They went to boxing matches, rock concerts, Broadway shows.  Technological inventions began to obsess Armand, one after the other. Television caught him utterly, they saw Lestat on TV. Daniel had always been a compulsive traveler, he had fled Armand to cities worldwide, and certainly he and Armand had taken planes together. 

Daniel lived only in two alternating states: misery and ecstasy, united by love. He never knew he had be given the blood. They purchased mansion, yachts, speedboats, a small but exquisitely appointed jet plane. Pearls, rubies, emeralds, diamond tiaras, these he brought to Daniel. Armand stole anything and everything, guns, suitcases full of many, and even boats. He stole them all from cartels. Daniel had head the cry in danger in his dream, and Armand linked it to Lestat’s song. The rock star has awakened Egyptian Mother and Father.

Khayman

He didn’t know who he was, or where he had come from, but he liked all around him. He liked the piano music, the motion pictures, and the poems. He also liked the automobiles, the great jet planes. The rock and roll, he liked that too. He liked all music and the Vampire Lestat’s song. He wished he was a human, but now he was only the First Brood.

Jesse and the Investigators of the Paranormal, Talamasca

She was delicate woman of thirty-five with long curly red hair. Two hours until the Vampire Lestat’s concert. The dream was maddeningly dim as all the dreams of the twins had been. Yet she knew the twins were in the desert kingdom again. The mob surrounding the twins was dangerous. Torches were thrust at them as they embraced one another, but something was wrong. One of them was now blind, and they cut out another one’s her tongue. The dream was fading rapidly. Jesse wrote her aunt Maharet about her dream.

She was born luckily, found by the side of the road minutes after the car crash that had killed her seven-months-pregnant teenaged mother- a baby spontaneously aborted from the dying womb, and screaming loudly to clear her own tiny lung when the ambulance arrived. It was Maharet who at last came to her, identifying her as sole survivor of the Reeves family of South Carolina and taking her to New York to live with cousins of a different name and backgrounds. There she grew up in a lavish old two-story apartment with Maria and Matthew Godwin, who gave her not only love but everything she could want. Matthew was a doctor and Maria was a sometime dancer and teacher. She was the daughter they had always wanted, and these had been rich and happy years.

The letters from Maharet started before she was old enough to read. It was her aunt who inspired her in her reading, encouraging her music lesson, and painting classes, arranged her summer tours of Europe and finally her admission to Columbia, where Jesse studied ancient language and art. Maharet had arranged her trip to visit her European’s cousin, the Reeveses. In Italy she was charmed by the cousins who drove their sleek Ferraris at breakneck speed and stereo blaring. The Jewish cousin in California were a dazzling bunch of musicians, designers, and producers who had one way or the other been connected with the motion pictures.  

But who was Maharet, who had always been Jesse’s distant but ever attentive mentor. To all the cousins whom Jesse was ever to visit. Maharet was the keeper of the records of the Great Family. Before Maharet, there had been her mother, now called Old Maharet. Jesse saw ghosts. Maharet invited her to her house in Columbia. There had been strange things happening from the start when she arrived at her aunt’s house. Mael, for instance, a tall overpowering man with long wavy blond and deep-set blue eyes.

Maharet and Mael simply never appeared until the dark, they slept all day. Their room lay empty all day with doors open, the closets overflowing with exotic and spectacular clothes. Santino, a black-haired Italian, who arrived on evening on foot, with a youthful companion named Eric. Later the awful and catastrophe had begun. A girl, Jesse’s mother, Miriam appeared.

She was now in London, working at the British Museum. She had a love affair while she was in London. It ended badly, and she felt rather alone. Jesse had been living in an old house in Chelsea, not far from where Oscar Wilde once lived. She loved that house, but unbeknownst to her, the house in which she leased her rooms had been haunted for many years. Jesse saw several strange things within few months. However when a reporter was doing a story on the haunted house. It made for rather melodramatic article. Jesse was called as a psychic or natural medium who saw things all the time. She didn’t much care, she was deep into her studies at British Museum. 

The Talamasca, having read the paper, came to call. Aaron Lightner, an old-fashioned gentleman with white hair and exquisite manners, had asked Jesse work for the psychic investigation. She was given an impressive allowance, a private parlor adjacent to her bedroom, a full-time driver and a comfortable old car. She left her job at the British Museum as soon as possible.

When David Talbot, the head of entire order, called her up to his office in London, she was surprised. Jesse was being offered a very different sort of assignment. He gave her a novel called Interview with the Vampire, and David explained simply it was true story. She assigned to investigate those character in the book, the author, a nomadic young man who resisted all Talamasca attempts at contact. He was a reporter. She sent to New Orleans and documented the events in the story which took place there. 

By the end of the week, Jesse was on a plane for New Orleans. As for the rule to follow, she was not allowed to remain in New Orleans except between the hours of sunrise and four p.m. Over centuries, several members of the order had disappeared during this type of investigation. Then four days into her investigation, she made a series of discoveries that sent her directly to the phone. She found a diary and saw Claudia. Someone was calling her from the other side, she had fallen. When the ambulance arrived she refused to let them take her bag. Two days later Aaron Lighter arrived, she was still sick when she got on the plane for London. They pulled her off assignment.

Two weeks after her return, Jesse saw the novel in the window of a book store. All day she lay alone in her room reading the Interview with Vampire. She was back home to New York and she embraced her parents headed to New Orleans. She had sent an expert letter to Maharet, along with the vampire book. She explained that she had left the Talamasca, she was going to the Vampire Lestat’s concert to see the rock star for herself.

On the concert, all the bloodsuckers gathered amongst the mortal. Khayman was assigned by Maharet to protect Jessica. He also saw Armand and his lover Daniel, Louis, Pandora, Marius, a vampire from ancient Roman, Mael.

It had been a game to him, to steal the letters and add his notes to them; to frighten them, to crawl out under their bed in the night. He made fun of them. It was Mael who approached Khayman. The telepathic gift had always be a curse to him too, whether he was besieged by the voice of blood drinkers and humans. Benjamin had been his name in that brief of respite of consciousness, and Benjamin the Devil they had labeled him in their fancy Latin script.

Lestat Concert

The radio chattered of devil worship, riots, random fires, mass hallucinating. Thousands took no notice. The vampire Lestat was a human rock star and nothing more, his concert the scene of predictable though uncontrollable hysteria.

The great rattle of drums drowned out Lestat’s voice. The Queen sat in her golden chair, the voice of Lestat rose again. David Talbot was there to seek Jessica. Five times she had been swept back from the stage. She felt her heart knocking again as she stared up with him.  She wiped her nose, cried again, and touched him. The crowd had her again. The fang teeth discovered her as a Talamasca, then struck her in chest. Firefighter, cop, saved found her neck has broken, that meant surely that one to be dead. Jessica Miriam Reeves. She was near death; her body gone. Maharet saved her and turned her to be a vampire.

Lestat in the arms of the Goddess

Two hundred years ago, when he drunk from her shrine, the blood had been silent. Terrible things had happened, after she awaked. Gabrielle, Louis’s mother and Louis were safe. Baby Jenks was killed. Akasha was so beautiful, but the danger thrilled him. She called him prince, she liked Lestat. She was too powerful, she killed not only mortal but immortal too. Lestat thought of Baby Jenks again, and all the blood drinkers who were now dead. He saw her killed Azim. He saw the coven house in Istanbul burning. Lestat’s music, the rising of the mother, so much death.

The Story of the Twins

The aging Queen of that realm died without a daughter to carry on  the royal blood. And amongst many ancient people the royal blood went only through the female line. Since no male can ever be certain of the paternity of his wife’s child, it was the Queen or the Princess who brought with her divine right to throne. This is why Egyptian pharaos of a later age often married their own sisters. It was to secure their royal right.

The young King Enkil hadn’t had sister, he didn’t even have a royal cousin or aunt to marry. But he was young and strong and determined to rule his land. Akasha was a beautiful of the royal family, and a worshiper of the great goddess Innana, and one who could bring into Enkil’s kingdom the wisdom of the land. The people of the Nile were farmers already, they tended to neglect to hunt or to make war on human flesh.

As this horrified beautiful Akasha, who set about at once to turn them from this barbaric habit as possibly anyone of higher civilization might do. She also brought with her writing, as the people of Uruk had it. The ban upon all cannibalism in Nile Valley, those who disobeyed were cruelly put to death.  The tribes who hunt for flesh for generations were infuriated that they could no longer enjoy this sport.

A small family lived in a cave of their ancestor, they had all things they needed- fine robes and jewelry and lovely ivory and sandal of leather-brought to that family as offerings, for no one ever paid them for what they did. Every day people of their village came to consult with them-the question about the spirit, to see the future. The three of them had telepathic power, and could drive out the demon. The mother and the two daughters had a symbolic miracle, they could make big rain which was needed for corps. Makare and Maharet did often little rain for joy. The village served them meat and drink. 

Before the mother was to die, a letter from King and Queen of Kemet, which was the land of Egypt as the Egyptians called it themselves. The twins couldn’t read it, they found it frightening, and thought that it might be a curse. They didn’t touch it, though the messenger said it was from King Enkil and Akasha. The King and Queen had heard their great power and would be honored if they visited the court.

Mother felt something from it, the King and Queen were evil, and finally they asked the spirits. Terrible danger would come to them if they were to go to the court. Several nights later, an evil spirit came to them, one which called Amel. Enormous, powerful, and telling them that they might soon need his help. The devil, in particular, was maddened by their neglect of him. He was a spirit, he had no body, but he could draw blood from human. Amel demonstrated his power, he had drawn blood from the twin’s mother.

Mekare was the more powerful witch; the one born first, the one who always took the lead in things; the one who spoke out immediately; the one who acted as the older sister. Over their mother’s body, the Egyptian soldiers threw everything. They tramped the body of the mother, her heart, her eyes, and her brain.

Mekare had called the spirits to punish the soldiers. Rocks rolled down the mountain; dust rose in clouds. The massacre went on unbated. Mekare and Maharet were ready to die. They saw their village burning, the fields, the men and the women of their tribe lying dead. They had seen their people massacred, they had seen their mother’s body desecrated.

The soldier took the twin to Egypt. Khayman, the King’s chief steward, pitied on them. They never seen people so rich as that Egyptians, people decked out with so much jewelry, people with beautiful plaited hair and painted eyes. As before Khayman was their only consolation, he brought them fresh linen, fruit to eat, and beer to drink. Their trial had begun.

Akasha ordered their execution, they should be burnt alive the next day together. Mekare called all the names of spirits. They gathered up, and surrounded the Queen. She had never witnessed the slightest proof of the supernatural, and she struck dumb. Then Amel, the evil one, appeared, and suddenly flung down before Akasha the lost necklace of she had been speaking – a necklace lost in Uruk. She was thunderstruck. The necklace was in her mother’s tomb. It had probably stolen from the body of Akasha’s mother, and very possibly by Akasha’s father. It had never been buried in any tomb. All over the Queen’s beautiful face and arms the tiny bitelike wounds appeared as so many red dots of blood. She screamed, Amel was in ecstasy. Mekare commanded him to stop.  Meantime the King rushed to the aid of Akasha; Khayman ran to her.

For three nights and days they were kept prisoner. The Queen was afraid to kill the witches. The King was intrigued by what had happened; he had believed that more could learned from the twin. As the King removed his gold chain and medallion and put it around the neck of Khyaman, they knew that they were to be raped before the court, raped as common female prisoners or slaves would have been raped in any war. Enkil ordered Khayman to rape the witches.

They released them, they were left at the edge of desert. They were dying in the desert, Maharet had a child from Khayman in her womb. Maharet wanted her child to live. The spirits led them to the Bedouin peoples, they took, and cared them. In their own land Maharet gave birth to her daughter and named her Miriam as her mother had named before her. She had Khayman’s black hair but the green eyes of her mother. They were three again,

Before they left the shepherd people, soldiers came again, under the command of the King’s high steward, Khayman, soldiers who had passed out gold along the way to any tribe who had seen or heard of red-haired twins and knew where they might be. He saw his daughter. He said terrible evil had come over the King and the Queen. He stretched out his arms, the tiny scars that covered him where spirit had drawn blood.

Mekare called Amel, but he had flesh now. Finally the witches agreed to see the Queen and the King. They appeared in sunset, they were pale. Their minds was no longer entirely their minds. When they drank blood they felt ecstasy. Queen blamed the twins for the curse, she punished them. The Queen cried out to her soldiers to cut out Mekare’s tongue, and to pluck out the eye balls from Mekare’s eyes. The King ordered to burn them, but the Queen wanted the twins suffered. Khayman came to their cell, Khayman turned them to be a blood suckers. They never had the night seemed so silent, noting in human breathed in the darkness. The spirits were utterly gone forever.

Long before sunrise, they were hidden, as the King and the Queen were hidden deep within a tomb. The King and the Queen feared to destroy their body. They had believed Mekare’s account of the one great spirit, Amel, who infected all of us, and they feared that whatever pain the witches might feel would then be felt by them. They put them into coffins and the rafts had already made to set them adrift to the great oceans. For ten night the raft carried Maharet, at last she came ashore on the eastern coast lower Africa. She began to search for Mekare, crossing the continent to the west.

For centuries, Maharet had searched her sister from one tip continent to the other. In those early centuries, the Legend of the twins was born; for the Egyptian soldiers who had witnessed the events of their lives from the massacre of their people to their final capture were to tell the tales. The Legend of Twins was even written by the scribes of Egypt in later times.

Thousand years later Maharet did come to Egypt, an anonymous being, swathed in black robes, to see herself what had become of the Mother and Father-listless, staring statues, shut up in stone in their underground temple, with only their heads and throats exposed. All over the world blood drinkers had gone in flames during those daylight hours in Egypt. She journeyed from India to Egypt. It was then she heard Marius, a young Roman blood drinker, miraculously unburnt. He had already made an immortal of Pandora, whom he loved above all other things on earth.     

Miriam survived to carry the blood of the family, and her people forward in time. Yet in the early centuries Maharet found her sister lived. Then finally in this modern century, a young archaeologist, hearing tell of them, climbed Mount Carmel one afternoon with a lantern in his hand. He had traveled far and wide with his bits and pieces of evidence- the pictures of cave drawings from both the Old World and New Maharet gave him every means to continue his research into the Legend of the Twins.

Akasha did not annihilate her people, they lived on her daughter, Miriam, and her daughters and those daughters born to them. Thousands of years passed her family in anonymity. The name of Maharet came with the honor; when the time demanded it, old Maharet would die, and young Maharet would inherit the task. Maharet became the writer of letters; the benefactor; the unifier the mysterious yet trusted visitor who appeared to heal breaches and right wrongs.

When all the vampire gathered, Lestat and the Queen of the Damned, Akasha, appeared. Lestat had asked her to stop the blood bath. Akasha had learned nothing in six years and she was in rage on the slaughtering human. The technological advances had used to kill the human, they have given it poison gas, nuclear accidents that had contaminated the food and drink of entire continents. The children dying in the Eastern countries, in the name of Allah as the guns crackled and the bombs fell. Now all the vampire were her enemies and had pursued her to stop her killings. Then later she called her prince, Lestat, as her enemy too. Her lover and her enemy at the same time.  

Akasha would bring new religion, and new revelation, new wave of superstition and sacrifice and death. Lestat stabbed his lover with the dagger, the blood tears were coursing her face. Her scream struck the room, the window, the glass crashing down. Not dead yet, but dying. Akasha brain and heart were pull out by the twins. Mekare lifted the brain to her mouth; Maharet put the heart in her other hand. Lestat couldn’t stop crying, her eyes were becoming transparent, her hair lay soft and the dried blood was lustrous and ruby red.

Miami, a vampire’s city, was hot. The victims just waiting: the pimps, the thieves, the dope kings, and the killers. The vampire gathered and enjoyed their times. They loved movies. Jesse had gone to join Maharet in Rangoon, nobody knew where Maharet had taken Mekare. Lestat was busy on his stack of pages beside of the computer, he was writing a new book called the Queen of the Damned.

The mortals relieved that Vampire Lestat had died in the pages of newspapers; that debacle of the concert had been forgotten. Lestat and Louis visited the Talamasca in London. They had sent a letter to Talamasca that declared Jesse was dead. Lestat now wanted to talk to David Talbot, the man in his sixty-five with a fatal illness. He offered him to be immortal, and had threatened the old man. He forced the old man to make Lestat’s file. The Vampire Lestat on the shelf wasn’t enough, he wanted his own file. Louis had warned him but Lestat was a perfect devil, he broke the rule again.

*****

October 10, 2014

Sekapur Sirih

Novel kronika ketiga dari sekuel vampir yang terbit pada tahun 1988 dan telah dicetak 20 kali hingga pada tahun 2002. Pada tahun yang sama novel terjual laris ini difilmkan oleh Warner Bross yang dibuat dalam judul yang sama, setelah meliha filmnya, sangat meyakinkan bahwa versi cetak jauh lebih bagus.

Fantasi setebal 573 halaman ini diterbitkan oleh Time  Warner tahun 2002. Memulai membaca di September pada hari ke enam akhirnya selesai juga di hari ke sepuluh di bulan Oktober di tahun 2014 merupakan tantangan berat tapi sangat nikmat memahami karya bermutu milik Anne Rice ini.

Fantasi, horror, pembunuhan, keserakahan, cinta, kasih sayang, asmara, seks (sejenis), persahabatan, pembunuhan, dan kekeluargaan.

Ringkasan Terjemahan dalam Bahasa Indonesia: Queen of The Damned (Ratu Kegelapan), Novel karya Anne Rice

Lestat kini dikenal di antara mortal (manusia) sebagai bintang rok, penulis buku dan lagu. Musiknya telah memikat hati dan telinga manusia, ada yang bentuk vidio bahkan. Buku Interview with Vampire, yang dituliskan oleh reporter muda, dan dituturkan Louis telah menambah ketenaran Lestat, setelah itu ia juga menulis buku otobiografinya.

Ketenaran vampir Lestat menarik perhatian Talamasca, sebuah perusahaan investigasi supranatural. Jesse seorang investigator pemula pada keluarga paranormal Talamasca, ditugaskan dari London untuk menginvestigasi tokoh-tokoh dan lokasi dalam novel Interview with Vampire, karena didapati itu bukan fiksi. Semuanya nyata.

Serangkaian penemuan tentang rumah Louis, bahkan bertemu hantu Claudia. Disayangkan Jesse terpaksa pulang dalam keadaan sakit, terjatuh, diganggu setan. Dia pun ditarik dan tidak dibebastugaskan dalam penelitian itu. Gadis itu dianggap terlalu muda. Jesse keluar dan pulang ke rumah orang tua angkatnya di New York. Jesse sendiri anak dari gadis muda bernama Miriam yang tewas dalam kecelakaan.

Bibi Maharet mengatur semua kehidupan bayi Jessica hingga diasuh oleh keluarga jauh yang bermukim di New York. Pasangan dokter dan guru seni yang membesarkan gadis itu, hidup dalam kasih dan fasilitas berlimpah. Dia tidak tahu persis kapan bibi Maharet hadir dalam hidupnya. Tetapi sebelum ia membaca surat-suarat dari bibi Maharet sudah ada. Lewat surat-suratnya Maharet adalah mentornya; dari pemilihan sekolah dan siapa saja anggota keluarganya.

Setelah dianggap cukup dewasa, ia diatur berlibur ke Eropah ke rumah para sepupunya. Jesse hanya bertemu sekali dan diundang ke rumah bibinya di Columbia. Jesse sangat bingung dengan kehidupan bibinya. Sang bibi dan temannya Mael tidak pernah muncul di siang hari, tetapi rumahnya akan berubah ramai dengan pesta di malam hari. Menurut pengakuan saudara-saudaranya bibi Maharet itu pengumpul keluarga besar. 

Pada bagian pengantar dijelaskan bahwa kini vampire Lestat haus  akan ketenaran dan muncul di antara manusia membuat dia semakin sombong dan menantang para vampir lainnya keluar dari persembunyiannya, dan misi utamanya membangkitkan Ibu dan Ayah vampire dari tidurnya. Ratu Akasha dan Raja Enkil penguasa enam ribu tahun silam dari Mesir. Banyak pula vampire yang ingin membunuh sang rocker.

Tantangan yang bernada mengejek dan menantang Ibu dan Ayah Vampir bangkit dari tidurnya. Lirik lagu-lagunya membuat para vampir lainnya ingin menyaksikan konser itu termasuk si Legenda Kembar, Baby Jenkin dan geng Fang-nya, Khayman si vampir mewah, Armand (vampire klasik dari Paris) dan Daniel, pemuda pewawancara dalam Interview with the Vampire.

Jesse, gadis muda merupakan keponakan Maharet (si Legenda Kembar) yang saat ini menjadi murid perkumpulan peneliti paranormal Talamasca yang berkantor di kota London. Jesse telah melanggar aturan Talamasca dengan mengadakan kontak langsung dengan vampir Lestat yang berbahaya itu. Dia juga terpesona ketampanan dan pesona rocker.

Lagu-lagu Lestat sangat diminati mortal (sebutan bagi manusia), ia menyelenggarakan sebuah konser musik spektakuler live di San Fransisco. Akasha, sang ibu dari segala vampir dan kejahatan terusik dari 6000 tahun tidurnya ingin melihat ketenaran vampir Lestat, keturunannya. Keduanya ternyata punya kesamaan niat dalam menguasai dunia, namun Akasha semakin brutal menghabisi banyak vampir dan manusia secara sadis.

Perbuatan sadis Akasha yang telah menewaskan manusia dan menghancurkan para vampir, dengan terang-terangan di antara mortal, dikuatirkan mengancam keberadaan para vampir dan mortal. Kini Akasha dan Lestat sepasang kekasih dibuai asmara, Lestat pun menikmati kekuatan majis sang ratu. Kelompok vampir bersatu pun berhasil menaklukkan mereka dan membunuh Akasha. Sang rocker sendiri menghianati kekasihnya, turut berperan memusnahkan ratu jahat itu dengan tikaman belatinya.

*****

October 10, 2014